CEPEP wins against another contractor

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A for­mer con­trac­tor with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) who sued for over $4 mil­lion was in­stead or­dered to pay the com­pa­ny over $200,000 in le­gal fees.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by CEPEP to­day, the con­trac­tor Stephen Samuel En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed was yes­ter­day or­dered to pay CEPEP’s le­gal costs to­tal­ing $259,516.25.

Samuel ini­tial­ly filed a claim on Ju­ly 3, and a day lat­er with­drew the claim which sought $4,777,000 in com­pen­sa­tion af­ter the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed in June last year.

Samuel’s claim was dis­con­tin­ued af­ter it was learnt that his com­pa­ny was re­moved from the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry by the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­trar since Feb­ru­ary 2025.

The re­lease stat­ed: “Had he suc­ceed­ed, CEPEP’s fi­nan­cial risk ex­po­sure would have been over $5M but it would have set a prece­dent for all oth­er con­trac­tors and could have po­ten­tial­ly cost CEPEP and the coun­try in ex­cess of $4 bil­lion.”

In her rul­ing, the re­lease stat­ed, High Court Judge Maris­sa Robert­son ruled that Samuel’s com­pa­ny should pay CEPEP’s le­gal claim­ing that the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col pro­ceed­ings “ought to have been pur­sued in a mean­ing­ful man­ner,” adding that it would have been ben­e­fi­cial to Samuel to have had more time be­fore is­su­ing the pre-ac­tion let­ter.

“If the claim was de­layed by one (1) day, there was not a ma­te­r­i­al dif­fer­ence to the Claimant’s cir­cum­stances. In fact, the Claimant would have gained an op­por­tu­ni­ty or time to re­fer to the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry and to re­view if the sta­tus of the Com­pa­ny un­der the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry” the re­lease quot­ed Robert­son.

The ev­i­dence filed in court by CEPEP re­vealed that Samuel was paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7 mil­lion by CEPEP in con­tracts over the past 7 years. His con­tract was sud­den­ly ex­tend­ed by CEPEP’s Board for a fur­ther three years mere days be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion. This was done de­spite the fact that the ex­ist­ing con­tract had over a year left be­fore it ex­pired and could come up for re­new­al.

Samuel is the sec­ond con­trac­tor to have sued CEPEP and lost. An­oth­er East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed had its mat­ter was dis­missed in both the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal af­ter the courts found that he did not utilise the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process agreed on in his con­tract al­low­ing for ar­bi­tra­tion be­fore court in­ter­ven­tion.

“CEPEP is pleased that it has been vin­di­cat­ed in these mat­ters and main­tains that the de­ci­sion to ex­tend all CEPEP con­tracts on the false premise that Cab­i­net had au­tho­rised this is a cause for great con­cern. It was a gross mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that was per­pet­u­at­ed up­on the com­pa­ny and the peo­ple. The Com­pa­ny is there­fore com­mit­ted to seek­ing jus­tice against those re­spon­si­ble for this fi­as­co and in­tends to con­sult its line min­is­ter, the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath on these mat­ters. Any­one guilty of breach­ing their fidu­cia­ry du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to CEPEP should face the full brunt of the law and CEPEP is com­mit­ted to leav­ing no stone un­turned in its quest for jus­tice” the re­lease said.

Samuel was rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la SC, St. Clair Michael O’Neil and Ka­reem Mar­celle while CEPEP was rep­re­sent­ed Anand Ram­lo­gan SC, Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, Aasha Ram­lal and Clar­isa Ra­goo­nanan.