Derek Achong

A lit­tle over a dozen peo­ple and com­pa­nies have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to op­pose a pe­ti­tion seek­ing to wind-up State-owned project man­age­ment com­pa­ny Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) over its in­abil­i­ty to cov­er its debts. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies, who ei­ther have pend­ing law­suits or judge­ments against EF­CL, made their in­ten­tion clear as they ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing of EF­CL’s pe­ti­tion, yes­ter­day. 

Of the 28 per­sons and com­pa­nies, who re­spond­ed to pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ments over EF­CL’s pe­ti­tion and at­tend­ed yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, 15 in­di­cat­ed that they would be mount­ing chal­lenges. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney De­vesh Ma­haraj, who is rep­re­sent­ing five of the com­pa­nies, re­quest­ed that Jus­tice Gob­in ex­tend the sev­en-day pe­ri­od un­der the Com­pa­nies Act for op­posers to file their ev­i­dence.

Ma­haraj not­ed that the case was com­plex and unique as the State, through the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, is the sole share­hold­er of the com­pa­ny. 

At­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sent­ed an­oth­er com­pa­ny, agreed as he claimed that the move would have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions. 

“The State can­not starve its com­pa­ny and then cred­i­tors are left with an emp­ty bag,” Ra­mad­har said.

Jus­tice Gob­in agreed and gave the par­ties a month in which to file their ev­i­dence. 

She ad­journed the case to Ju­ly 4, when she is ex­pect­ed to set dead­lines for the par­ties to file sub­mis­sions in the case. 

In its pe­ti­tion, filed in late Feb­ru­ary, EF­CL sought to de­tail its cur­rent as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties to have the com­pa­ny wound up. 

“The wind­ing-up of the Com­pa­ny will pro­vide for a pro­ce­dure that al­lows for eq­ui­table and fair dis­tri­b­u­tion amongst cred­i­tors. It en­sures that some cred­i­tors do not prof­it at the ex­pense of oth­ers and halts an unchecked scram­ble by in­di­vid­ual cred­i­tors to achieve ad­van­tage in favour of a col­lec­tive, co­op­er­a­tive ap­proach,” EF­CL’s act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gay­a­tri Badri-Ma­haraj said in the pe­ti­tion. 

Badri-Ma­haraj claimed that at the time of the pe­ti­tion, EF­CL’s as­sets con­sist­ed of $4,508 in its ac­count at RBC Roy­al Bank and $46,000 in of­fice fur­ni­ture. 

She not­ed that the com­pa­ny had 79 un­sat­is­fied judge­ments/awards dat­ing back to 2016 and to­talling $321 mil­lion, 30 pend­ing law­suits in the High Court and In­dus­tri­al Court over $119 mil­lion, and le­gal claims which are yet to be filed to­talling $47 mil­lion. 

It al­so has a $156 mil­lion bal­ance on a syn­di­cat­ed loan agree­ment with RBC Trust (T&T) Lim­it­ed, which it en­tered in­to to help fi­nance the con­struc­tion of schools in 2017. 

Badri-Ma­haraj al­so point­ed out that the com­pa­ny’s 41 em­ploy­ees have not been paid since Sep­tem­ber, last year, and are owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.27 mil­lion.

“The Com­pa­ny has no in­come, the Com­pa­ny has ceased to car­ry on busi­ness and there is no rea­son­able prospect that the Com­pa­ny’s busi­ness can be car­ried on,” Badri-Ma­haraj said. 

Badri-Ma­haraj ex­plained that the com­pa­ny de­rived its in­come sole­ly from project man­age­ment fees paid by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. 

She claimed that in 2016 the com­pa­ny’s ac­tive projects were re­duced from 118 to 20 schools and in June 2020, it re­ceived in­struc­tions from the min­istry to cease en­gag­ing con­trac­tors. 

She claimed that the com­pa­ny’s ac­count­ing soft­ware in­di­cat­ed that the min­istry still owed it $44.8 mil­lion in project man­age­ment fees and $889 mil­lion in con­struc­tion costs. 

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that the sums may be in­ac­cu­rate or ma­te­ri­al­ly mis­stat­ed due to chron­ic is­sues in the com­pa­ny’s ac­count­ing sys­tems. 

“Over the years the Com­pa­ny has been plagued with sys­tem­at­ic mis­man­age­ment, high turnover of staff, em­ploy­ees lack­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the po­si­tions held, poor su­per­vi­sion and man­age­ment of con­tacts,” she said. 

“The Com­pa­ny has been plagued with per­sis­tent al­le­ga­tions of fake in­voic­es, cor­rup­tion, bid-rig­ging, ma­nip­u­la­tion of pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures to favour spe­cif­ic con­trac­tors, nepo­tism and favouritism,” she added. 

Badri-Ma­haraj stat­ed that the com­pa­ny has been in­un­dat­ed with lit­i­ga­tion from con­trac­tors, which it has been un­able to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly de­fend due to a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion. 

She al­so not­ed that some con­trac­tors, who were able to ob­tain de­fault judg­ments against EF­CL, levied against its as­sets. 

She said the com­pa­ny al­so had is­sues in ob­tain­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments. 

At­tached to the pe­ti­tion was a re­port on EF­CL’s ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness pre­pared by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment in 2018. 

EF­CL was rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ravi Heffes-Doon, Tama­ra Toolsie and Sav­it­ri Sookraj-Be­har­ry.