DEREK ACHONG

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the State-owned Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) have ad­mit­ted to fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­leged bid-rig­ging in a se­ries of con­tracts award­ed to a group of con­trac­tors in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

EM­BD’s lawyers made the ad­mis­sion while re­spond­ing to sub­mis­sions in an ap­peal over the de­ci­sion of a High Court Judge to refuse to dis­miss the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel claim against the con­trac­tors be­cause of a lack of de­tails on the al­le­ga­tions against them.

Ad­dress­ing Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mour­er and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, British Queen’s Coun­sel David Phillips claimed that it did not make sense for his client to com­mis­sion ex­pen­sive foren­sic re­ports un­til the pre­lim­i­nary le­gal is­sues were re­solved.

“We have been the vic­tim of a cal­cu­lat­ed and so­phis­ti­cat­ed con­spir­a­cy...A so­phis­ti­cat­ed con­spir­a­tor leaves no trace,” Phillips said.

He claimed that for­mer High Court Judge James Aboud, who has since been el­e­vat­ed to the Court of Ap­peal, was not plain­ly wrong for al­low­ing the case to pro­ceed based on pre­lim­i­nary fil­ings as it could still be dis­missed when all the ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions are be­ing con­sid­ered.

“He (Aboud) was not say­ing that the case would suc­ceed at tri­al. He was say­ing the case could suc­ceed at tri­al,” Phillips said.

How­ev­er, Phillips stood by the strength of his client’s case pre­sent­ed thus far.

“There is pow­er­ful ev­i­dence of con­cert­ed wrong­do­ing,” he said.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the con­trac­tors, Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj claimed that the State com­pa­ny had to pro­vide par­tic­u­lars that it suf­fered pe­cu­niary loss­es through his clients’ al­leged con­duct, in or­der to pur­sue the un­law­ful means con­spir­a­cy law­suit against them.

Ma­haraj claimed that the al­leged de­fi­cien­cies in the case as plead­ed proved that EM­BD did not con­duct a prop­er and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore ini­ti­at­ing it.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion was vi­tal as each of their clients had to sub­mit de­fences to in­di­vid­ual al­le­ga­tions lev­eled against them.

A sta­tus hear­ing of the case is set for Feb­ru­ary 25 as EM­BD’s le­gal team re­quest­ed time to file a re­sponse to last-minute new sub­mis­sions brought by the con­trac­tors.

In that hear­ing, the Ap­peal Court is ex­pect­ed to deal with an ap­peal brought by EM­BD over the dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions set by Aboud.

The 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 owned on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

The EM­BD coun­ter­sued the con­trac­tors claim­ing that they as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co con­spired to­geth­er with for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal 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.

Con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit) and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, and Ka­ri­na Singh. Na­mal­co was rep­re­sent­ed by Roger Kawal­sigh.

Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Alvin Pariags­ingh, and Ganesh Sa­roop rep­re­sent­ed Mooni­lal, who did not join in ei­ther the ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case or the cor­re­spond­ing ap­peal. Walk­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al.

EM­BD is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ja­son Mootoo and Sav­it­ri Sookraj-Be­har­ry.