A lawyer has chal­lenged a judge’s de­ci­sion to re­fer him to the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) for fa­cil­i­tat­ing a ques­tion­able mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar loan. 

On Mon­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Varun De­bideen filed an ap­peal over a judg­ment de­liv­ered by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad last month. 

The law­suit cen­tred around a con­tract for a ma­jor con­struc­tion project en­tered be­tween Ad­vance Hose and Mar­ket­ing and Cordell Philbert in Ju­ly 2023. 

The com­pa­ny pur­sued le­gal pro­ceed­ings af­ter it ad­vanced the mon­ey to Philbert and his com­pa­ny and they failed to per­form the work or re­turn the mon­ey. 

In his court fil­ings, De­bideen’s lawyers, led by Tom Richards, KC, raised five grounds un­der which they con­tend that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was not en­ti­tled to re­fer the case to the com­mit­tee. 

They claimed that the judge could on­ly do so if he found pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct and failed to al­low De­bideen to be heard. 

“To do so was pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair, ir­ra­tional, and un­law­ful,” they said. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, De­bideen said that the ap­peal was war­rant­ed as the find­ings were in­con­sis­tent with the ev­i­dence. 

“It is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble how such find­ings could have been made giv­en the ev­i­dence in the case, which al­ways sup­port­ed my plead­ed case and my in­no­cence,” De­bideen said. 

He al­so took is­sue with the fact that the judg­ment was de­liv­ered by the judge on a pub­lic hol­i­day. 

“The pur­pose of this judg­ment was pri­mar­i­ly suit­ed to grab head­lines and at­ten­tion,” he said. 

De­bideen is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Umesh Ma­haraj, and Ner­isa Bala. 

In late Oc­to­ber, last year, the com­pa­ny’s lawyers, led by Jagdeo Singh, ob­tained a Nor­wich Phar­ma­cal or­der from a High Court Judge about the RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T) Lim­it­ed ac­count held by Philbert that the com­pa­ny trans­ferred the funds to.

Such or­ders seek to com­pel third par­ties, such as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, to re­veal con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion of their clients, which can then be used to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion over al­leged wrong­do­ing. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that Philbert’s fi­nan­cial records showed that af­ter re­ceiv­ing the funds, $6 mil­lion was trans­ferred to an ac­count held by at­tor­ney De­bideen. 

It fur­ther claimed that $624,650 was trans­ferred to ZA Lim­i­ty En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tan­cy, a com­pa­ny owned by Joash Ram­jat­tan. 

De­bideen, who was ini­tial­ly list­ed as a de­fen­dant in the case, firm­ly de­nied that he was in­volved in any sus­pect­ed con­spir­a­cy af­ter his bank ac­counts were tem­porar­i­ly frozen dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary stages of the lit­i­ga­tion. 

He ad­mit­ted that he rep­re­sent­ed Ram­jat­tan and point­ed to a $24 mil­lion loan agree­ment, for which the mon­ey was part of, which he pre­pared for Philbert and his client. 

He claimed that the in­ter­im pay­ment by Philbert to Ram­jat­tan un­der the agree­ment was used to pay a por­tion of a $3.4 mil­lion judg­ment debt Ram­jat­tan owed to a third par­ty and his as­so­ci­at­ed le­gal fees. 

Al­though De­bideen was re­moved from the law­suit be­fore the case went to tri­al in Feb­ru­ary, as he en­tered in­to a con­sent agree­ment with the com­pa­ny, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad still made some find­ings in re­la­tion to him, in­clud­ing re­fer­ring him to the com­mit­tee.