An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire has ini­ti­at­ed le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the State, chal­leng­ing what he de­scribes as his un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al ter­mi­na­tion from of­fice.

On Sep­tem­ber 4, Dr Hi­laire’s le­gal team filed an ap­pli­ca­tion in the High Court seek­ing leave for ju­di­cial re­view. That ap­pli­ca­tion was grant­ed just four days lat­er, on Sep­tem­ber 8.

The at­tor­neys have since ad­vanced the mat­ter by fil­ing a fixed date claim form, seek­ing both ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­lief, cit­ing breach­es of Dr Hi­laire’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

The claim has been for­mal­ly served to the Cab­i­net and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Hi­laire dis­patched a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the Cab­i­net sec­re­tary and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in Au­gust, fol­low­ing the break­down of out-of-court set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions.

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in­cludes a de­mand for dam­ages to­talling $9.86 mil­lion, cit­ing breach of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, emo­tion­al dis­tress, and loss of earn­ings for the un­ex­pired term of his ap­point­ment.

Hi­laire’s le­gal team com­pris­es Stu­art Young, SC, and at­tor­neys Im­ran Ali and An­tho­ny Bul­lock.

Hi­laire served as Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T from De­cem­ber 2015 to June 2025.

He re­placed Jwala Ram­bar­ran, whose ap­point­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. Hi­laire was due to serve un­til De­cem­ber 2026.