Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has ac­cused Stephen Samuel’s Con­trac­tors Ltd of abus­ing the courts to wage a po­lit­i­cal at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment, but then abrupt­ly with­drew its case with­out warn­ing af­ter trig­ger­ing a cost­ly le­gal re­sponse.

The con­trac­tor filed an ur­gent High Court claim on the night of Ju­ly 3, hours af­ter serv­ing CEPEP with a nine-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter and giv­ing them un­til 3 pm to re­spond. The doc­u­ments in­clud­ed a claim form, five af­fi­davits, a state­ment of case, and a cer­tifi­cate of ur­gency.

Led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Jared Ja­groo, CEPEP said it had be­gun prepar­ing its le­gal de­fence when it was “sud­den­ly served with a no­tice of with­draw­al”, with­out any ex­pla­na­tion or pri­or copy.

“The claim was mis­con­ceived, hope­less, friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious,” CEPEP’s le­gal team wrote. “Your client has had a sud­den melt­down and with­drawn its claim with­out any ex­pla­na­tion.”

But in its ini­tial let­ter, the con­trac­tor, who is rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la and at­tor­ney St Clair O’Neil, ar­gued that CEPEP’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate their con­tract “ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly” breached the agree­ment, dis­re­gard­ed due process, and had cat­a­stroph­ic ef­fects on work­ers.

The con­trac­tor said its com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed vi­tal em­ploy­ment to dozens of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, in­clud­ing sin­gle par­ents, peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness­es, and fam­i­lies al­ready strug­gling with debt.

“Many of them have in­sur­ance to pay, loans, rent and oth­er bills and even mort­gages,” the let­ter stat­ed. “They work hard in or­der to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.”

The com­pa­ny al­so ar­gued that CEPEP’s ter­mi­na­tion let­ter failed to of­fer pay­ment in lieu of no­tice and cit­ed un­fair con­tract terms that heav­i­ly favoured the state agency.

CEPEP’s lawyers pushed back hard, ques­tion­ing why the con­trac­tor’s agree­ment, which was ini­tial­ly set to ex­pire in No­vem­ber 2026, was sud­den­ly ex­tend­ed to 2029, just five days be­fore the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. They claimed there were no records of board ap­proval, no pub­lic ten­der­ing, and no le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ex­ten­sion.

“The fail­ure to fol­low the cor­rect pro­ce­dure has giv­en rise to rea­son­able grounds for sus­pi­cion that there may have been some form of il­le­gal po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and favouritism,” Ram­lo­gan wrote.

The com­pa­ny al­so point­ed to pub­lic com­ments from key PNM fig­ures and al­leged that a group of par­ty-aligned at­tor­neys had co­or­di­nat­ed the claim.

“Front­line le­gal spokes­men for the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment made this a ma­jor pub­lic is­sue,” CEPEP wrote, de­scrib­ing the fil­ing as part of a broad­er cam­paign to at­tack the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

CEPEP said it had paid the con­trac­tor over $7 mil­lion over the past sev­en years and stressed that the CEPEP pro­gramme was in­tend­ed as a tem­po­rary start-up for small busi­ness­es, not a long-term fund­ing mech­a­nism.

Had the case pro­ceed­ed, CEPEP claims it would have ex­posed “fla­grant breach­es” of the com­pa­ny’s poli­cies and po­ten­tial­ly na­tion­al laws. The agency said it re­serves the right to raise the mat­ter with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

Now it plans to seek le­gal costs and wants to know whether oth­er con­trac­tors in­tend to bring sim­i­lar “test cas­es”.

“It was clear­ly an abuse of the court’s process and an il­le­git­i­mate in­vo­ca­tion of the court’s ju­ris­dic­tion for the du­bi­ous pur­pose of pro­vid­ing per­ceived le­gal po­lit­i­cal am­mu­ni­tion.”

At a meet­ing last night at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of­fice in Ch­agua­nas, for­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris-Al-Rawi dis­missed claims that the mat­ter had col­lapsed as “fake news”.

He ex­plained, “It turns out that many com­pa­nies work­ing in CEPEP were, in fact, the vic­tims of an ex­er­cise to delist and dereg­is­ter com­pa­nies at the com­pa­nies reg­istry. And it turns out that the claimant, one of the con­trac­tors in one of the claims, found him­self, with­out his knowl­edge, in that sit­u­a­tion. Easy fix, you with­draw, you bring a new one be­cause they have 336 con­trac­tors. Very sim­ple fix.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Lal­la yes­ter­day but did not re­ceive a com­ment.