A group of busi­ness­es owned by To­ba­go busi­ness mag­nate Al­lan Warn­er have ap­pealed the dis­missal of their ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion over the re­lease of heavy equip­ment and a prop­er­ty that was seized by the po­lice as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their min­ing op­er­a­tion.

The pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal was re­vealed by at­tor­ney Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai as the law­suit brought by five of Warn­er's com­pa­nies, his son Aluko, and a group of em­ploy­ees and busi­ness as­so­ciates against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) came up for hear­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad set dates for the par­ties to file sub­mis­sions in the sub­stan­tive case and ad­journed it to No­vem­ber 11.

In re­ject­ing the group's ap­pli­ca­tion on Au­gust 21, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said that some of the items that were seized by the po­lice in May were re­turned while he was weigh­ing in on the ap­pli­ca­tion.

He not­ed that the re­main­ing equip­ment could not be re­leased be­cause they are ev­i­dence in on­go­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Warn­er, his son, and their em­ploy­ees and as­so­ciates.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: "A con­sti­tu­tion­al court must act with cau­tion and should not pre-empt any le­git­i­mate in­ves­tiga­tive process nor should it in­ter­fere with the rea­son­able and or ra­tio­nal ex­er­cise of the in­ves­tiga­tive and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion."

He said that the Warn­ers and their as­so­ciates did not prove any ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances to war­rant such an in­ter­fer­ence.

He point­ed out that sep­a­rate ap­pli­ca­tions for the re­lease of the re­main­ing items had been made be­fore the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer hear­ing the crim­i­nal case against the group.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so said that the group could be com­pen­sat­ed for their loss of use of the equip­ment if they are suc­cess­ful in de­fend­ing the crim­i­nal charges.

The claimants in the case are Warns Quar­ry Com­pa­ny Ltd, Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd, In­ez In­vest­ments Ltd, Pres-T-Con 2021 Ltd, All­crete Ltd, Warn­er's son Aluko, em­ploy­ees Robert Wil­son, Ricky Joseph, Corey Charles, Ki­mal Williams, Will­insque To­bias, and Shas­tri Mad­hoo and in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors Rueben Mapran­gala, De­on George, Rudy Sa­hai, Aaron Nep­tune, and Ah­meed David.

The group filed a law­suit con­tend­ing that an on­go­ing po­lice probe, which re­sult­ed in the in­di­vid­u­als and Warn­er be­ing charged with en­gag­ing in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Through the as­so­ci­at­ed in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, they were seek­ing the re­turn of heavy equip­ment, tools and com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices that were seized by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing raids in De­cem­ber, last year, and in May, as well as the re­lease of a 16.67-hectare par­cel of land in Waller­field that was com­man­deered by the po­lice as part of their probe.

In the law­suit, the group's lawyers not­ed that Pres-T-Con ob­tained a 25-year lease from a com­pa­ny for the Waller­field prop­er­ty in Jan­u­ary 2022.

Pres-T-Con grant­ed per­mis­sion to Warns Quar­ry to oc­cu­py the prop­er­ty and the lat­ter was grant­ed a li­cence from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands on May 20.

They not­ed that on June 18, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries grant­ed Warns Quar­ry a con­di­tion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion to un­der­take min­er­al pro­cess­ing at the prop­er­ty un­til the end of next year.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that un­der the li­cence and con­di­tion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion, the com­pa­nies did not have ex­clu­sive pos­ses­sion of the prop­er­ty, which is on State land.

He al­so not­ed that the li­cence and au­tho­ri­sa­tion did not per­mit min­ing ac­tiv­i­ty which al­leged­ly oc­curred be­fore they were grant­ed.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the com­pa­nies should not be fur­ther pre­vent­ed from util­is­ing ar­eas of the prop­er­ty that do not form part of the on­go­ing probe, in ac­cor­dance with the ap­provals they re­ceived.

"The ev­i­dence has not es­tab­lished that there ex­ists any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to im­pose re­stric­tions on those rights pro­vid­ed that the ex­er­cise of these rights do not in­ter­fere with the items and equip­ment which are cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," he said. He did note that he could not or­der the po­lice to va­cate the por­tions still un­der probe as there was no ev­i­dence they act­ed op­pres­sive­ly and un­rea­son­ably.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad warned that the re­main­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be swift­ly com­plet­ed.

Warn­er, his son, and sev­en em­ploy­ees and as­so­ciates, who were charged with pro­cess­ing ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence un­der Sec­tion 45(1)(a) of the Min­er­als Act, are ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Sep­tem­ber 27.

The group, which has de­nied any wrong­do­ing, faces a $200,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for two years if they are even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed.

The com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Chelsea Ed­wards, of Hove and As­so­ciates. The AG's Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Tama­ra Toolsie, while Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Tekiyah Jorsling and Vin­cent Jar­dine rep­re­sent­ed the DPP's Of­fice.