An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) has re­moved its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Er­ic Grif­fith, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

An in­ter­nal memo dat­ed March 5 (yes­ter­day), from the com­pa­ny’s board of di­rec­tors, ad­vised staff that Grif­fith was no longer em­ployed at the state-owned land de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment com­pa­ny as of March 4.

The memo, ad­dressed to all se­nior staff and em­ploy­ees, out­lined an im­me­di­ate lead­er­ship tran­si­tion at the com­pa­ny.

To en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in EM­BD’s op­er­a­tions, the board ap­point­ed cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kavi­ta Sar­ran as act­ing CEO, ef­fec­tive March 4, in ad­di­tion to her ex­ist­ing role.

Staff were in­struct­ed that all work-re­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion must now be di­rect­ed to Sar­ran and that com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the for­mer CEO should cease im­me­di­ate­ly. The board al­so re­quest­ed that de­part­ments ur­gent­ly up­date the act­ing CEO on their on­go­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Sar­ran yes­ter­day on the change in lead­er­ship, but she de­clined to pro­vide a com­ment.

EM­BD is al­so in­volved in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit with sev­er­al con­trac­tors, for­mer com­pa­ny of­fi­cials and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter and cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. The sub­stan­tive le­gal dis­pute cen­tres on 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture, which were award­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny, Kall Co Ltd (Kall­co) and Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing ini­ti­at­ed lit­i­ga­tion against the spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny over an al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance they claim re­mains out­stand­ing on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

In re­sponse, EM­BD filed a coun­ter­claim al­leg­ing that the con­trac­tors, along with firms Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired with sev­er­al of­fi­cials to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

The com­pa­ny al­leged the con­spir­a­cy in­volved Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gary Par­mas­sar, di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop, and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the claim, the par­ties al­leged­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed to se­cure the con­tracts and fa­cil­i­tate pre­lim­i­nary pay­ments for work, which EM­BD con­tends was over­priced and sub­stan­dard.

The coun­ter­claim fur­ther al­leges that a loan in­tend­ed to fund oth­er le­git­i­mate projects was used to make in­ter­im pay­ments re­lat­ed to the dis­put­ed con­tracts.

Through the law­suit, EM­BD is seek­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $275 mil­lion in dam­ages, in ad­di­tion to in­ter­est and a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions from the court, in­clud­ing a rul­ing on the le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

The mat­ter was ini­tial­ly be­fore Jus­tice James Aboud, then re­as­signed to Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, and was re­cent­ly re­as­signed to new­ly ap­point­ed civ­il judge Jus­tice Vig­il Paul.

The case has drawn sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion be­cause of the scale of the con­tracts and the al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials and con­trac­tors linked to in­fra­struc­ture works.

EM­BD op­er­ates as a State-owned en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for es­tate man­age­ment and in­fra­struc­ture-re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly those linked to hous­ing and in­dus­tri­al es­tates.

The com­pa­ny’s board has not pro­vid­ed fur­ther de­tails on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Grif­fith’s re­moval or whether the lead­er­ship change is con­nect­ed to any on­go­ing le­gal or op­er­a­tional mat­ters.