High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has warned that he will not fa­cil­i­tate un­jus­ti­fied de­lays in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar car­tel law­suit brought by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) against a group of con­trac­tors, for­mer EM­BD of­fi­cials and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter and cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad is­sued the warn­ing yes­ter­day, in a writ­ten de­ci­sion on an ap­pli­ca­tion made by lawyers for the State com­pa­ny to ex­tend dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in the case, set dur­ing a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence in June.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “Now that this court is seized of the in­stant mat­ters, the par­ties must un­der­stand that de­lay would not be coun­te­nanced, nor will the court al­low its process to be ma­nip­u­lat­ed so as to avoid ef­fi­cient and time­ly res­o­lu­tion of these mat­ters.

“Af­ter eight years, there will be a no-tol­er­ance ap­proach to de­lay and as long as the in­stant mat­ters re­main dock­et­ed to this court, they will progress with alacrity.”

He point­ed out that his gen­er­al stance of strict case man­age­ment has re­sult­ed in lit­i­gants be­fore him be­ing able to have a tri­al with­in four months of fil­ing their case.

“This po­si­tion has been achieved through a no-tol­er­ance ap­proach to de­lay, medi­oc­rity, and in­ef­fi­cien­cy,” Seep­er­sad said.

He ruled that EM­BD had not jus­ti­fied the need for the ex­ten­sions, which were sup­port­ed by one of the con­trac­tors.

“The in­stant ap­pli­ca­tion must be con­sid­ered in the con­text of the eight-year de­lay and the pub­lic in­ter­est in hav­ing the mat­ters de­ter­mined ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

While Seep­er­sad not­ed that the case rais­es nov­el and crit­i­cal is­sues over breach­es of con­tracts and the al­leged ma­nip­u­la­tion of the process for per­son­al gain, he said the is­sues are not over­ly com­pli­cat­ed to war­rant fur­ther de­lay.

“The ev­i­dence which un­der­lies the claims must have been un­earthed and eval­u­at­ed pri­or to the in­sti­tu­tion of the claims in 2017 and 2019 re­spec­tive­ly, and the de­ci­sion to com­mence lit­i­ga­tion ought to have been doc­u­ment­ed by EM­BD’s board at the ma­te­r­i­al times,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that the dead­lines were set dur­ing the pre­vi­ous hear­ing, as EM­BD’s lawyers re­quest­ed time to con­sult the com­pa­ny’s then yet to be ap­point­ed board on the case.

“The court is cog­nizant that stem­ming from the April 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, and the con­se­quen­tial chance in the Re­pub­lic’s po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, that a new­ly ap­point­ed EM­BD board is now in place,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that the board should not re­quire sig­nif­i­cant time to con­sid­er the case, as the com­pa­ny’s le­gal team re­mained the same through­out the lit­i­ga­tion.

“The mat­ters be­fore the court raise im­por­tant is­sues as to ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and the pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic purse, and they have gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal and pub­lic in­ter­est,” he said.

“Sure­ly, the new EM­BD board is cog­nizant of these re­al­i­ties and it is ex­pect­ed that it would act in a re­spon­si­ble and mea­sured man­ner as it care­ful­ly con­sid­ers the ap­proach to be adopt­ed.”

The sub­stan­tive law­suit cen­tres around 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture, which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny, Kall Co Lim­it­ed (Kall­co), and Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing ini­ti­at­ed lit­i­ga­tion against the State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

EM­BD counter-sued the con­trac­tors, claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop, and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts. It al­so claimed the par­ties agreed to fa­cil­i­tate the con­trac­tors re­ceiv­ing pre­lim­i­nary pay­ments for the work, which was al­leged­ly over­priced and sub­stan­dard and utilised a loan, meant to pay for oth­er le­git­i­mate con­tracts, to make the in­ter­im pay­ments.

Through the law­suit, EM­BD is seek­ing $275 mil­lion plus in­ter­est and a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the par­ties, in­clud­ing one on the il­le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

Ear­li­er this year, EM­BD amend­ed its case to claim that Mooni­lal served as a “shad­ow di­rec­tor” of the com­pa­ny, as its for­mer of­fi­cials re­port­ed to and took in­struc­tions from him. It claimed Mooni­lal breached his fidu­cia­ry du­ties and those un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

EM­BD’s main new al­le­ga­tion was in re­la­tion to pay­ments al­leged­ly made by the con­trac­tors to third par­ties, who it claimed were con­nect­ed to Mooni­lal and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

While the EM­BD was con­nect­ed to the Min­istry of Hous­ing dur­ing Mooni­lal’s for­mer tenure, it was re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries based on a no­tice pub­lished in the T&T Gazette.