David Achong

Con­trac­tor Emile Elias has won an 18-year le­gal bat­tle with a com­pa­ny owned by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert over the con­struc­tion of Grena­da’s Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Elias, chair­man of NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Ltd, said on Ju­ly 28 the Court of Ap­peal dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from Im­bert’s com­pa­ny call­ing for a stay of ex­e­cu­tion of a judge­ment that was de­liv­ered in his favour in 2011.

“This de­ci­sion brought to an end the lat­est in a cost­ly se­ries of failed at­tempts by Im­bert to stop NH from re­ceiv­ing monies found due to it for work done on the Grena­da Na­tion­al Sta­di­um,” Elias said.

In ad­di­tion to seek­ing the court to or­der Im­bert’s com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al Sta­di­um (Grena­da) Project, to pay his com­pa­ny’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions, Elias is mov­ing to en­force the judge­ment against Im­bert’s com­pa­ny dur­ing a hear­ing card­ed for No­vem­ber 3.

The dis­pute first arose dur­ing con­struc­tion of the sta­di­um in 1997.

While Elias’ com­pa­ny was fired be­fore the project was com­plet­ed, it claimed it was owed $55 mil­lion in­clu­sive of in­ter­est for what it had done.

The dis­pute led to sev­er­al law­suits filed lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

In 2004, Jus­tice Joseph Tam froze $17 mil­lion, part of a larg­er sum held by Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) for the project. The funds were even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) af­ter Elias raised is­sues of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment at CIB.

CIB, a sub­sidiary of CL Fi­nan­cial, was one of three com­pa­nies that were sub­ject to Gov­ern­ment’s bailout in 2009. It has since been put in liq­ui­da­tion.

In 2011, Jus­tice Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar ruled in Elias’ favour, with his judge­ment be­ing up­held by the Court of Ap­peal.

As the mat­ter has come to an end, Elias will now be able to ac­cess the judge­ment sum held in es­crow at UTC and re­cov­er the re­main­der from Im­bert’s com­pa­ny.

Last month, Elias re­signed as chair­man of ma­jor­i­ty State-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider TSTT to de­vote more time to his com­pa­ny.