Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der has lost his ap­peal over be­ing or­dered to pay over $525,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for defama­tion.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain this morn­ing, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son re­ject­ed Alexan­der’s ap­peal.

The ap­peal pan­el ruled that High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son could not be crit­i­cised for up­hold­ing Im­bert’s case against Alexan­der in Oc­to­ber 2023.

The judges said they would have come to the same con­clu­sion based on the ev­i­dence in the case.

They al­so ruled the com­pen­sa­tion was ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances.

The law­suit re­lat­ed to a se­ries of posts Alexan­der made on his Face­book page over sev­er­al hours be­tween 29 Feb­ru­ary 2020 and 1 March 2020.

Alexan­der al­leged that Im­bert had pur­chased an ex­ot­ic Swedish sports car for US$2 mil­lion by us­ing for­eign ex­change he ob­tained by cor­rupt means or by abus­ing his of­fice as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Im­bert de­nied any wrong­do­ing and filed the claim al­leg­ing that his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion was dam­aged.

Im­bert con­firmed the out­come of the ap­peal in a post on his X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count.

“His [Alexan­der’s] ap­peal was DIS­MISSED to­day in 1 hour. The High Court de­ci­sion of was AF­FIRMED,” he said.

Im­bert was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas. Alexan­der was rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er.