Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran has again emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his le­gal bat­tle over be­ing wrong­ful­ly dis­missed by the Gov­ern­ment, on the ad­vice of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in De­cem­ber 2015.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, ap­pel­late judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar dis­missed an ap­peal from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad to up­hold Ram­bar­ran’s case and or­der over $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion in 2022. 

It was a ma­jor­i­ty judg­ment, with Jus­tices Bereaux and Mo­hammed agree­ing and Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar pro­vid­ing a some­what dif­fer­ing opin­ion.

While all three judges agreed that Jus­tice Ram­per­sad was cor­rect to rule that Ram­bar­ran was treat­ed un­fair­ly and his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law was breached, they dis­agreed over the com­pen­sa­tion that was award­ed.

All three judges agreed that he was cor­rect to award Ram­bar­ran sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion based on his month­ly base salary of $173,435 plus al­lowances but not­ed that he was wrong to award him an ad­di­tion­al $175,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages.

Jus­tices Bereaux and Mo­hammed al­so ruled that he was wrong to award Ram­bar­ran for the per­for­mance bonus­es he would have po­ten­tial­ly re­ceived for the re­main­ing two years of his con­tract, es­ti­mat­ed at al­most $2 mil­lion.

In his dis­sent­ing judg­ment, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar ruled that Ram­bar­ran should have on­ly re­ceived half the per­for­mance bonus­es.

He al­so ruled that he should have been giv­en an ad­di­tion­al $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience he en­dured.

The ap­peal pan­el grant­ed a two-week stay of ex­e­cu­tion to give the AG’s Of­fice time to con­sid­er the judg­ments and de­cide whether to mount a fi­nal ap­peal to the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

Ram­bar­ran’s lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, not­ed that he would not ob­ject to an ur­gent ap­peal as his client want­ed the pro­tract­ed case to be swift­ly re­solved.

“He has been fi­nan­cial­ly ru­ined while wait­ing on jus­tice for a very long time,” Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­bar­ran was ap­point­ed Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor in Ju­ly 2012, and his con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed in De­cem­ber 2015.

The de­ci­sion came short­ly af­ter Ram­bar­ran an­nounced that T&T was in a re­ces­sion and af­ter he re­vealed the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

Ram­bar­ran al­so claimed he lost out on a po­si­tion as a se­nior ad­vi­sor to the G-24 Sec­re­tari­at based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, as Im­bert for­ward­ed the press re­lease over the re­vo­ca­tion of Ram­bar­ran’s ap­point­ment to the of­fi­cial re­cruit­ing him.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Bereaux ruled that Ram­bar­ran was not treat­ed fair­ly by Im­bert. 

“He was not told the spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tions against him, nor was he giv­en any re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the charges,” Jus­tice Bereaux said.

“At min­i­mum, the min­is­ter was re­quired to tell the re­spon­dent (Ram­bar­ran) that Cab­i­net was con­sid­er­ing ter­mi­nat­ing his ap­point­ment and why, while per­mit­ting the re­spon­dent the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond,” he added.

He said that Im­bert had a cru­cial du­ty of fair­ness in the case.

“Any­thing less ren­dered the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate un­fair, il­le­gal, null, void, and of no ef­fect. That du­ty was plain­ly not dis­charged,” he said.

Deal­ing with his per­for­mance bonus­es for 2016 and 2017, Jus­tice Bereaux not­ed that the judge could not ex­trap­o­late bonus­es for years that Ram­bar­ran did not work based on pre­vi­ous per­for­mance ap­praisals done by the CBTT board.

“The re­spon­dent can­not be award­ed a sum as a bonus for the pe­ri­od af­ter ter­mi­na­tion when there was no per­for­mance. Pay­ment of a bonus is per­for­mance-re­lat­ed,” he said.

Turn­ing to the vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages that were or­dered by Jus­tice Ram­per­sad based on Ram­bar­ran be­ing fired with­out re­gard to his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, Jus­tice Bereaux not­ed that com­pen­sa­tion giv­en for breach­es of his rights would suf­fice.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar ruled that Ram­bar­ran should have re­ceived a por­tion of his per­for­mance bonus­es as he had a 50/50 chance of re­ceiv­ing it.

He al­so re­ject­ed Ram­bar­ran’s com­plaints in re­la­tion to Im­bert’s state­ments to the G24 of­fi­cial. He ruled that there was no ev­i­dence that he lost out on the ap­point­ment based on it.

Ram­bar­ran was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Vishaal Siewsaran, and Natasha Bis­ram.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas.