JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Judge rules EMBD has case against contractors

by

Derek Achong
1812 days ago
20200807
High Court Judge, Justice James Aboud.

High Court Judge, Justice James Aboud.

Derek Achong

 

A group of con­trac­tors have lost their bid to have a con­tro­ver­sial law­suit over con­tracts award­ed in the run-up to the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion dis­missed at a pre­lim­i­nary stage.

De­liv­er­ing an over 100-page pre­lim­i­nary judge­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge James Aboud dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion in which the con­trac­tors were call­ing for the strik­ing out of the case if the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) did not pro­vide ad­di­tion­al par­tic­u­lars on its al­le­ga­tions against them.

How­ev­er, Aboud ruled that the EM­BD had pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient pre­lim­i­nary facts which should be de­ter­mined by the court at an even­tu­al tri­al.

“Some­one has to ex­plain at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, in a way that is sen­si­ble, how it is that these un­usu­al pat­terns, odd­i­ties and in­con­sis­ten­cies can ex­ist oth­er than by col­lu­sion by con­trac­tors,” Aboud said as he de­liv­ered his ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry for al­most two hours over his sched­uled time.

Aboud was al­so care­ful to note that the par­ties sued and coun­ter­sued by the EM­BD are yet to file their de­fences in the sub­stan­tive case and would be able to prove their cas­es that the al­leged ac­tion com­plained about is un­war­rant­ed at the tri­al stage.

He said the EM­BD could not be ex­pect­ed to ex­pend funds to hire ex­perts to analyse the ev­i­dence to the de­gree sought by the con­trac­tors un­til the ap­pli­ca­tion was de­ter­mined, as it could be po­ten­tial­ly a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

Based on his de­ci­sion, Aboud will have to now de­ter­mine a se­ries of oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions seek­ing to ex­tend the time for the par­ties to file their de­fences be­fore the case goes to tri­al.

The process may be de­layed if the con­trac­tors de­cide, with­in the next sev­en days, to ap­peal Aboud’s de­ci­sion.

 

The law­suit cen­ters around 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. 

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

The EM­BD coun­ter­sued the con­trac­tors, claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

It al­so claimed that 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 in­ter­im pay­ments to the con­trac­tors.

Through the law­suit, the EM­BD is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the par­ties, in­clud­ing one on the il­le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

In his judge­ment, Aboud said based on his analy­sis of the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed thus far and with­out the as­sis­tance of the de­fen­dants’ cas­es and ex­perts, the EM­BD had the strongest plead­ings against Par­mas­sar.

“Par­mas­sar would have a lot to an­swer for at tri­al,” Aboud said.

Last week, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit) and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) wrote to Aboud seek­ing a de­fer­ral of his de­ci­sion un­til af­ter next week’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, cit­ing ad­verse com­men­tary from the coun­ty’s main po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

Aboud, how­ev­er, de­clined based on the fact that he had set the date for the long-out­stand­ing de­ci­sion be­fore the elec­tion was pro­claimed and be­cause of his tight court sched­ule.

Con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit) and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Jagdeo Singh, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ka­ri­na Singh. Na­mal­co was rep­re­sent­ed by Roger Kawal­sigh.

Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Alvin Pariags­ingh and Ganesh Sa­roop rep­re­sent­ed Mooni­lal, who did not join in ei­ther the ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case or the pro­pos­al to post­pone the de­ci­sion. Fides was rep­re­sent­ed by Lynette Ma­haraj, SC.

The EM­BD is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by David Phillips, QC, Ja­son Mootoo and Sav­it­ri Sookraj-Be­har­ry.

EMBD


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored