Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A third pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal will have to weigh in on a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal over the fu­ture of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel case over con­tracts award­ed by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ap­pel­late Judge Maria Wil­son main­tained her po­si­tion that she should re­cuse her­self from the case as her broth­er Ful­ton served as a mem­ber of EM­BD’s Board be­tween 2015 and 2021.

Re­it­er­at­ing what she an­nounced dur­ing a pre­vi­ous hear­ing on Mon­day, Jus­tice Wil­son claimed that while she could act im­par­tial­ly in the ap­peal she still had to step down based on pub­lic per­cep­tion of her broth­er’s link to the state board.

Jus­tice Wil­son’s de­ci­sion means that a new pan­el has to be as­signed to de­ter­mine the ap­peal. A case man­age­ment con­fer­ence be­fore the new pan­el is ex­pect­ed to take place next week.

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.

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 counter-sued the con­trac­tors claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with 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 the ap­peal, three of the con­trac­tors are con­tend­ing that for­mer High Court judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge James Aboud got it wrong when he dis­missed their ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case against them.

They are con­tend­ing that EM­BD did not pro­vide enough par­tic­u­lars on its al­le­ga­tions against them for them to prop­er­ly re­spond to the law­suit.

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

Af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal in May, the pan­el promised to de­liv­er its judg­ment on June 30.

Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh first con­sid­ered the ap­peal in ear­ly 2021 but had to re­fer the case to their col­leagues as they could not come to a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

EM­BD was rep­re­sent­ed by David Phillips, KC, and Ja­son Mootoo, SC. The con­trac­tors’ le­gal team was led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Jagdeo Singh.