Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cit­i­zens are be­ing warned to watch out that Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny (EM­BD) court mat­ters, in­volv­ing claims against con­trac­tors and a cur­rent Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, are not dis­con­tin­ued by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

That’s the warn­ing from for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who has called for the pub­lic to be alert to the sit­u­a­tion and to en­sure the Gov­ern­ment does not frus­trate the pur­suit of or dis­con­tin­ue the court mat­ters.

Young did so in a post on Face­book yes­ter­day, say­ing, “In 2016, a con­trac­tor launched a claim against EM­BD for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.3 bil­lion. This claim was made for works al­leged­ly award­ed and done un­der the UNC gov­ern­ment.

“The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion fought this claim and re­tained in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts and a team of com­pe­tent lawyers to dis­sect the claim be­ing made and to fight it in the courts. EM­BD ar­gued that work was not done and the val­ue of what was ac­tu­al­ly done was not what was claimed and ‘signed off on’ un­der the UNC.

“This is part of the EM­BD lit­i­ga­tion that the UNC gov­ern­ment wants to go away.”

Young said in 2022, a High Court Judge ruled that EM­BD was li­able for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $427 mil­lion of the $1.3 bil­lion claimed.

“That was ap­pealed by the con­trac­tor and we cross-ap­pealed. On Oc­to­ber 7, 2025, the Court of Ap­peal up­held the judge’s find­ings of con­spir­a­cy to in­jure and un­law­ful means con­spir­a­cy and re­duced the amount to be paid by EM­BD to the con­trac­tor to $121 mil­lion and fur­ther or­dered that the con­trac­tor re­pay $48.5 mil­lion to EM­BD.”

“This means that our ac­tions as the PNM gov­ern­ment led to sav­ings of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.2 bil­lion,” Young added.

“Please take care­ful note that if the UNC had won the 2015 elec­tion, the con­trac­tor would have been paid the $1.2 bil­lion for noth­ing, as the Court of Ap­peal has held that was not the val­ue of work done.”

He urged cit­i­zens to keep their eyes on the re­lat­ed EM­BD car­tel claims be­fore the court and en­sure the UNC Gov­ern­ment does not frus­trate EM­BD’s pur­suit of these mat­ters or dis­con­tin­ue them where claims are be­ing made against con­trac­tors and a sit­ting gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

“These mat­ters were very care­ful­ly pre­pared with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts and lawyers as part of our fight against white-col­lar crime,” he said.

Young said he has al­so asked sev­er­al times about the Beetham Waste­water Ar­bi­tra­tion and the out­come.

“Nei­ther NGC nor the Gov­ern­ment has told the pop­u­la­tion that NGC won the mat­ter against SIS and that the ar­bi­tra­tor or­dered that SIS pay over $350 mil­lion back to NGC. Why the si­lence??” he asked.