Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.chong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge has up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion by a man seek­ing to re­cov­er a $1 mil­lion debt from a com­pa­ny by ac­cess­ing mon­ey owed to it by the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

De­liv­er­ing his de­ci­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ap­proved the debt as­sign­ment ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Im­ran Mo­hammed against Sachtech Lim­it­ed.

The ap­pli­ca­tion arose from a breach of con­tract case be­tween Mo­hammed and Sachtech, which Jus­tice Seep­er­sad de­cid­ed in Mo­hammed’s favour in Sep­tem­ber 2024.

The judge or­dered the com­pa­ny to pay Mo­hammed $1 mil­lion in three in­stal­ments, but the debt re­mains un­paid.

While seek­ing to en­force the judg­ment, Mo­hammed’s lawyers dis­cov­ered that Sachtech had en­tered in­to a $1.5 mil­lion con­tract with the cor­po­ra­tion in March 2019 to pro­vide equip­ment and ser­vices.

The cor­po­ra­tion con­firmed that Sachtech had re­ceived $528,333.33 and was still owed $1,056,666.66.

Mo­hammed ap­plied for the cor­po­ra­tion to pay him the mon­ey owed to Sachtech to sat­is­fy the com­pa­ny’s debt.

In con­sid­er­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad had to de­cide whether the cor­po­ra­tion is part of “the State”, as the State Li­a­bil­i­ty and Pro­ceed­ings Act pre­cludes debt at­tach­ment or­ders against en­ti­ties with that des­ig­na­tion.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that the cor­po­ra­tion is a dis­tinct le­gal en­ti­ty to which the or­der could ap­ply. He based his de­ci­sion on the fact that the cor­po­ra­tion man­ages its own fi­nances through its own bank ac­counts, al­though the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment de­ter­mines its an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion.

In grant­i­ng the ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad gave the com­pa­ny un­til Oc­to­ber 19 to show cause why it should not be or­dered to pay the out­stand­ing bal­ance from the mon­ey owed to it by the cor­po­ra­tion.

Mo­hammed was rep­re­sent­ed by Zeik Ashraph and Giselle Seep­er­sad Singh.