DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

For­mer board mem­bers of the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (SporTT) have been found in breach of their fidu­cia­ry du­ties for ap­prov­ing a $34 mil­lion con­tract for the now-de­funct Life Sport pro­gramme.

High Court Judge Ricky Rahim, de­liv­er­ing his rul­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre ear­li­er to­day, up­held SporTT’s law­suit against for­mer CEO John Mol­len­thiel, for­mer chair­man Se­bas­t­ian Padding­ton and 12 oth­er for­mer di­rec­tors.

Jus­tice Rahim ruled the board failed to act in SporTT’s best in­ter­est when, in De­cem­ber 2012, they ap­proved a con­tract with eBeam In­ter­act Lim­it­ed on the in­struc­tions of the Min­istry of Sport.

He said the board should have ques­tioned eBeam’s abil­i­ty to de­liv­er, giv­en nu­mer­ous er­rors in its pro­pos­al, rather than un­crit­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing the min­istry’s di­rec­tive.

“The Board was act­ing on the in­struc­tions of the min­istry and did not con­sid­er whether it was in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny to do so,” Jus­tice Rahim said.

“State boards are sim­ply not rub­ber stamps,” he added.

He not­ed that had board mem­bers ob­ject­ed or asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, they would have helped en­sure the min­istry, and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment, met its oblig­a­tions.

Al­though SporTT sought sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion, the judge award­ed nom­i­nal dam­ages of $40,000 each against Mol­len­thiel and the for­mer di­rec­tors.

He found the failed con­tract caused loss to SporTT, but said that loss was dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy since eBeam had pro­vid­ed some ser­vices. He al­so not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed and re­paid the loan used to fund the con­tract.

“The re­al los­er in this en­tire cir­cum­stance was not the com­pa­ny but was the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of T&T, who were to ben­e­fit from the pro­gramme,” he said.

The oth­er de­fen­dants were Chela Lam­see-Ebanks, Reynold Bala, Nor­ris Blanc, Nisa Dass, Dr Anyl Gopeesingh, Cheemat­tee Mar­tin, Quam­i­na, An­nan Ram­nanans­ingh, Kent Sam­lal, Harnar­ine Seer­am Singh and Mil­ton Si­boo.

SporTT filed the claim un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment against the board ap­point­ed dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The court al­so or­dered the for­mer board to pay SporTT’s le­gal costs.

In a re­lat­ed rul­ing last Au­gust, High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well dis­missed SporTT’s breach of con­tract claim against eBeam, but or­dered the com­pa­ny to re­pay $30 mil­lion. She found eBeam had been un­just­ly en­riched for ser­vices not de­liv­ered.

Al­though SporTT sought the full $34 mil­lion, Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well de­duct­ed $4 mil­lion to ac­count for min­i­mal ser­vices and equip­ment eBeam had pro­vid­ed.

“It would be legal­ly un­just for the De­fen­dant to re­tain the ben­e­fit of $34 mil­lion when on­ly min­i­mum val­ue, un­re­lat­ed to any sub­stan­tial de­liv­ery of the bar­gained for ser­vices, was re­ceived by the Claimant un­der the con­tract,” she said.

“The min­i­mal ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the De­fen­dant did not mean­ing­ful­ly meet the ben­e­fit which was in­tend­ed by the par­ties to be de­liv­ered to the Claimant,” she added.

SporTT was rep­re­sent­ed by Col­in Kan­ga­loo SC, John Lee and Stephanie Moe.

The de­fen­dants’ le­gal team in­clud­ed Fyard Ho­sein SC, An­tho­ny Vieira SC, Rishi Dass SC, Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Roger Kawals­ingh, Ravi Mungals­ingh, Tara Bhar­ios­ingh, Nicole de Ver­teuil-Milne, Adri­an Ra­moutar, Sush­ma Gopeesingh, Kami­ni Per­saud-Maraj, Neal Bis­nath, Ly­dia Men­don­ca, Richard Ja­gai, An­drea Bhag­wan­deen and Dhar­men­dra Pun­wassee.