Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Three Ap­pel­late Judges will to­day de­cide whether they would step down from a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal in a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel case over con­tracts award­ed by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Maria Wil­son re­served their de­ci­sion on the is­sue af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions dur­ing a hear­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Dur­ing a pre­vi­ous hear­ing on Mon­day, Jus­tice Wil­son in­di­cat­ed that she had to step down from the ap­peal as her broth­er served as a mem­ber of EM­BD’s board be­tween 2015 and 2021.

“De­spite my will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue, it is pel­lu­cid to me there is an im­per­a­tive to en­sure jus­tice is not on­ly done but seen to be done,” Jus­tice Wil­son said.

At the time of Jus­tice Wil­son’s rev­e­la­tion, EM­BD’s lawyers re­quest­ed time to present sub­mis­sions on the is­sue.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, EM­BD’s lawyer David Phillips, KC, sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Wil­son’s link to her broth­er did not meet the thresh­old for re­cusal from the case.

“A pro­fes­sion­al judge will de­ter­mine the is­sues dis­pas­sion­ate­ly,” Phillips said.

In his sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for three con­trac­tors that pur­sued the ap­peal, com­mend­ed Jus­tice Wil­son for tak­ing the de­ci­sion.

“We seem to be in­di­rect­ly call­ing in­to ques­tion the de­ci­sion of the judge. Hav­ing made that de­ci­sion it can­not be ques­tioned,” Ma­haraj said.

The sub­stan­tive law­suit cen­tres around 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture, which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit), and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) ini­ti­at­ed the pro­ceed­ings against the State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

The EM­BD coun­ter­sued the con­trac­tors claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop, and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

It al­so claimed that the par­ties agreed to fa­cil­i­tate the con­trac­tors re­ceiv­ing pre­lim­i­nary pay­ments for the work which was al­leged­ly over­priced and sub­stan­dard and utilised a loan, meant to pay for oth­er le­git­i­mate con­tracts, to make in­ter­im pay­ments to the con­trac­tors.

Through the law­suit, the EM­BD is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the par­ties in­clud­ing one on the il­le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

In the ap­peal, three of the con­trac­tors are con­tend­ing that for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge James Aboud got it wrong when he dis­missed their ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case against them.

They are con­tend­ing that EM­BD did not pro­vide enough par­tic­u­lars on its al­le­ga­tions against them for them to prop­er­ly re­spond to the law­suit.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Aboud ruled that EM­BD had pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient pre­lim­i­nary facts, which should be de­ter­mined by the court at an even­tu­al tri­al.

Af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal in May, the pan­el promised to de­liv­er its judg­ment on June 30.

In the event that the ap­peal pan­el re­cus­es it­self based on Jus­tice Wil­son’s dis­clo­sure and a new pan­el has to be as­signed to re­con­sid­er the ap­peal, it would be the third to weigh in on the case.

Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh first con­sid­ered the ap­peal in ear­ly 2021 but had to re­fer the case to their col­leagues as they could not come to a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

Last Fri­day, the ap­peal pan­el held an emer­gency hear­ing to dis­cuss state­ments made about its pend­ing de­ci­sion by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

In his state­ment on June 12, Row­ley ap­peared to have al­leged the Court of Ap­peal had ruled in EM­BD’s favour in the ap­peal and ruled that the de­fen­dants in­clud­ing Dr Mooni­lal had to file their de­fences for the pro­tract­ed case to go to tri­al.

Row­ley made veiled ref­er­ences to a con­sent or­der that was en­tered dur­ing a hear­ing of the ap­peal, last month, un­der which the de­fen­dants in the case agreed to file their de­fences with­in 45 days of the Ap­peal Court rul­ing in the ap­peal.

Mooni­lal sought to ad­dress Row­ley’s com­ments as he ad­dressed a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Aranguez, last Mon­day.

Mooni­lal sought to ques­tion how Dr Row­ley could make pro­nounce­ments on the case when the Ap­peal Court is sched­uled to give its de­ci­sion on the ap­peal, next Fri­day.

He al­so called on Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to look in­to the mat­ter.

Speak­ing at an event to an­nounce the UNC can­di­dates for the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions in San Fer­nan­do on Mon­day, Mooni­lal said he was shocked by Jus­tice Wil­son’s dis­clo­sure.