An in­vest­ment com­pa­ny has been or­dered to pay al­most $3 mil­lion in out­stand­ing rent and in­ter­est to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty for a par­cel of land it leased to build a ho­tel near the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day grant­ed a de­fault judge­ment to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go against Bel Air In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the com­pa­ny reg­is­tered an ap­pear­ance af­ter the State au­thor­i­ty filed its law­suit to re­cov­er the rental ar­rears but it sub­se­quent­ly failed to file a de­fence lead­ing to the de­fault win for the au­thor­i­ty.

The law­suit cen­tred around a 50-year lease agree­ment signed by the par­ties for a 5.72-hectare par­cel of land.

The com­pa­ny agreed to pay $210,000 in rent an­nu­al­ly for the first three years while it was con­struct­ing a pro­posed four di­a­mond-rat­ed ho­tel, with the fig­ure dou­bling for the re­main­der of the lease.

The ho­tel was not con­struct­ed as planned and the com­pa­ny failed to pay rent from Oc­to­ber 2011 to Oc­to­ber 2016. 

In De­cem­ber 2016, the au­thor­i­ty com­menced for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings against the com­pa­ny and re­took con­trol of the prop­er­ty with­out op­po­si­tion. Through the law­suit, the au­thor­i­ty was seek­ing to re­coup $2.4 mil­lion, which rep­re­sents the full un­paid rent for five years.

It was al­so seek­ing to get the com­pa­ny to pay for the short pe­ri­od that it re­mained in con­trol of the prop­er­ty be­fore it was re­cov­ered. As per the terms of the lease, the au­thor­i­ty al­so sought in­ter­est on the ar­rears, cal­cu­lat­ed us­ing the cur­rent ba­sic prime rate used by lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

In ad­di­tion to pay­ing the com­pen­sa­tion, the com­pa­ny was al­so or­dered to pay the au­thor­i­ty's le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit.

The au­thor­i­ty was rep­re­sent­ed by Nigel Greaves.