An in­sur­ance bro­ker­age com­pa­ny has been or­dered to give its for­mer long-stand­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor a sig­nif­i­cant re­tire­ment pack­age. 

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad made the or­der on Thurs­day as he up­held Omar Daniel’s case against M&M In­sur­ance Broking Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

On Tues­day, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that most of the as­pects of Daniel’s claims over his en­ti­tle­ments had been ad­mit­ted af­ter con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence of Daniel, M&M’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and own­er Steve Castagne, and Castagne’s daugh­ter Is­abel Castagne-Hay, who took over for her fa­ther af­ter he stepped down from the com­pa­ny.

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad had giv­en the par­ties time to dis­cuss a set­tle­ment based on his pre­lim­i­nary find­ings, he was still forced to weigh in on the case af­ter the par­ties in­di­cat­ed that they had not come to an agree­ment when they reap­peared be­fore him on Thurs­day morn­ing. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Daniel was en­ti­tled to an $8,970 month­ly pen­sion un­til his even­tu­al death, in ac­cor­dance with a pol­i­cy in­tro­duced by the com­pa­ny in 2004. 

Un­der the pol­i­cy, the com­pa­ny promised a re­tire­ment pen­sion or stipend, which was cal­cu­lat­ed as a per­cent­age of an em­ploy­ee’s salary be­fore re­tire­ment. The per­cent­age is set at a rate of one per cent for every year the em­ploy­ee was em­ployed by the com­pa­ny. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so found that Daniel was en­ti­tled to be re­im­bursed for the $2,500 a month that was de­duct­ed from his salary based on the un­der­stand­ing that such would help in­crease his re­tire­ment pack­age. The ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sum was $476,000. 

He al­so found that Daniel was en­ti­tled to over $900,000, which rep­re­sents the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed com­mis­sion he should have re­ceived for man­ag­ing an over­seas pol­i­cy scheme of­fered by the com­pa­ny. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so up­held Daniel’s claims over promis­es made by Castagne while con­vinc­ing him to stay with the com­pa­ny be­fore he at­tained the na­tion­al re­tire­ment age of 60 in 2014. 

“This was in­te­gral be­cause at the time the law had changed and if he re­tired at 60, he would not have been able to be re-em­ployed in the same ca­pac­i­ty, hav­ing re­gard to re­quire­ments im­posed by the Cen­tral Bank,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.  

Castagne had promised a $1 mil­lion bonus as well as an apart­ment in a res­i­den­tial project in Mar­aval, which he (Castagne) and his broth­er were de­vel­op­ing. 

While Castagne claimed that the project had been stopped by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Daniel was still en­ti­tled to it when­ev­er it is even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that there was no ev­i­dence that Daniel was promised an apart­ment at One Wood­brook Place as a re­sult of the de­lay in com­plet­ing the Mar­aval project. 

Deal­ing with the bonus, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed Daniel’s claim that he did not re­ceive half the val­ue. 

He not­ed that in 2014, Castagne pur­chased $500,000 in TTNGL shares for Daniel as part pay­ment. He stat­ed that Daniel still re­ceived the val­ue, al­though the shares were sold for a low­er price by him. 

“That is the na­ture of in­vest­ments,” he said, as he or­dered the com­pa­ny to make the sec­ond pay­ment that was due when Daniel turned 65 years old in 2019. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so re­ject­ed Daniel’s claim that he be re­im­bursed for Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme (NIS) pay­ments that were de­duct­ed from his salary be­tween 2014 and when he even­tu­al­ly left the com­pa­ny in 2021. 

“He is not en­ti­tled to those sums be­cause the law man­dates that even af­ter the age of 60, once em­ployed, the NIS con­tri­bu­tion must be paid,” he said. 

As part of his judg­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered the com­pa­ny to pay in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad raised con­cerns over the ev­i­dence that was pre­sent­ed be­fore him. 

“For a com­pa­ny that pro­vides fi­nan­cial ser­vices, it is re­gret­table that such an ad hoc pen­sion arrange­ment ex­ists. Prop­er in­ter­nal sys­tems ought to be im­ple­ment­ed for the ben­e­fit of em­ploy­ees,” he said. 

Tes­ti­fy­ing on Tues­day, Daniel claimed that Castagne was re­spon­si­ble for cal­cu­lat­ing the re­tire­ment ben­e­fits for ex­ec­u­tives. 

While be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed by Daniel’s lawyer, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Castagne did not de­ny giv­ing Daniel the as­sur­ances. 

While he claimed that he felt that Daniel was en­ti­tled to the ben­e­fits, he con­tend­ed that the com­pa­ny’s board and his daugh­ter sub­se­quent­ly chal­lenged him and did not ap­prove of such. 

“I think she (Castagne-Hay) de­fies me in every sin­gle thing,” Castagne said. 

“I agreed it should be paid, but it is not my de­ci­sion, it’s Is­abel, so deal with her when she comes on the stand,” he added. 

In her ev­i­dence, Castagne-Hay ad­mit­ted that she con­sult­ed with her fa­ther but claimed that she was not bound to com­ply as he no longer played an ac­tive role in the com­pa­ny.  

“When he says I de­fy him, he means that I don’t take what he says as a di­rec­tion,” she said. 

The com­pa­ny’s le­gal team was led by Gre­go­ry Pan­tin.