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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

$.5m for ex-CEO in libel lawsuit

by

20160512

For­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­B­DC), See­bal­ack Singh, has been award­ed more than $.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion in a li­bel law­suit brought against the Trinidad Ex­press.

In de­liv­er­ing the 51-page judg­ment in the San Fer­nan­do High Court yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad was crit­i­cal of the stan­dard of jour­nal­ism in T&T.

Singh, through his at­tor­ney Prakash De­onar­ine, filed the law­suit in re­la­tion to two in­ves­tiga­tive sto­ries pub­lished on April 22, 2013 and June 30, 2013 which sug­gest­ed some wrong­do­ing on his part which re­sult­ed in his res­ig­na­tion.

Singh, who sub­se­quent­ly lost his job at the First Cit­i­zens Bank where he be­gan work­ing af­ter re­sign­ing from EM­B­DC, sued the news­pa­per, an ed­i­tor and two se­nior jour­nal­ists who wrote the ar­ti­cles. The de­fen­dants ar­gued the mat­ters in the ar­ti­cles were of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est and they met the stan­dards of re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism.

De­scrib­ing the ac­tions of one of the re­porters as reck­less, the judge found the jour­nal­ists "failed to dis­charge the oner­ous oblig­a­tion that rest­ed on their shoul­ders as in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and their fo­cus was on char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion and scan­dal."

Seep­er­sad said: "Char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion should nev­er be the fo­cal point of any in­ves­tiga­tive piece of jour­nal­ism."

In award­ing $450,000 plus in­ter­est in ag­gra­vat­ed and gen­er­al dam­ages, the judge said he con­sid­ered the al­le­ga­tions against Singh were grave and im­pact­ed in a ma­te­r­i­al way on his in­tegri­ty, ho­n­our, pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence and his rep­u­ta­tion. Say­ing "more like­ly than not," the first ar­ti­cle was the rea­son why he lost his job at the bank, the judge al­so award­ed $100,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages. Singh was al­so award­ed costs.

At­tor­ney Faa­rees Ho­sein, who rep­re­sent­ed the de­fen­dants, asked for a 21-day stay of ex­e­cu­tion which was grant­ed.


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