Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The le­gal tab for the US$131 mil­lion Pi­ar­co Air­port judg­ment grant­ed in favour of this coun­try two years ago, will be picked up by two sup­port­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and their Mi­a­mi coun­ter­part, ac­cord­ing to a judg­ment de­liv­ered on May 9.

The judg­ment came af­ter Mi­a­mi Cir­cuit Court judge Reeme­ber­to Di­az, in May 2023, or­dered that busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer UNC min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gui­tier­rez Jr pay this coun­try US$131,318,840.47. The mat­ter is now the sub­ject of ap­peal.

The award­ed sum is triple the amount the State re­quest­ed for dam­ages un­der US Rack­e­teer­ing In­flu­enced and Cor­rupt Or­gan­i­sa­tions (RI­CO) law.

A Mi­a­mi ju­ry found Fer­gu­son li­able for fraud linked to the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­tween the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.

Kuei Tung, a for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, and Gutier­rez, the for­mer prin­ci­pal of Cal­maquip En­gi­neer­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the com­pa­ny that pro­vid­ed spe­cialised equip­ment at the air­port, were pre­vi­ous­ly held li­able in the rack­e­teer­ing case.

In as­sess­ing costs for le­gal fees, Di­az found that the men should pay US$17,389,910.93 to the law firms White & Case and Se­quor.

Di­az found that at­tor­neys at both Se­quor and White & Case, on be­half of the coun­try, com­plet­ed 38,556.63 hours of work.

In to­tal, Se­quor’s at­tor­neys racked up US $6,078,770.43 while White & Case earned US $10,509,133.70. His rul­ing added that the state sought to re­cov­er US$802,006.80 in costs in­curred by both law firms.

Af­ter the ini­tial judg­ment, Fer­gu­son re­fused to di­vulge his as­sets, re­sult­ing in fur­ther lit­i­ga­tion. Di­az took this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and still is­sued the or­der.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the mid-year bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi thanked At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie for his work in the mat­ter.

“The fi­nal judg­ment was grant­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go, $17,389,910.93, and in­ter­est ac­crues on that. That judg­ment was pub­lished to the world on the ninth of May, 2025, af­ter the elec­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

“So, his­to­ry is go­ing to be in sharp fo­cus be­cause it re­al­ly is quite re­mark­able that the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has the plea­sure of con­clud­ing that work, and I am sure we are in good hands be­cause the kind of licks that the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al took for that mat­ter is un­prece­dent­ed.”