Court: E-IDCOT not exempt from Freedom of Info Act

Stephon Nicholas

The High Court has de­ter­mined that the Eco-In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT) is not ex­empt from the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).

In a May 21 rul­ing by Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son, the court said spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­nies cre­at­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to car­ry out pub­lic func­tions are sub­ject to law­ful scruti­ny, de­spite be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed as a lim­it­ed-li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny.

The Court found that E-ID­COT, which is owned, con­trolled, and fund­ed by the THA, has trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty oblig­a­tions.

The rul­ing fol­lowed E-ID­COT’s re­fusal to dis­close in­for­ma­tion to claimant Stephon Isaac sur­round­ing the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion of Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel and Dive Cen­tre in Spey­side, in­clud­ing mat­ters re­lat­ed to pro­cure­ment eval­u­a­tions, con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments, and a fran­chise agree­ment in­volv­ing Choice Ho­tels In­ter­na­tion­al Inc.

The court or­dered E-ID­COT to re­con­sid­er the re­quest for in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the fran­chise agree­ment in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 35 of the FOIA, “in­clud­ing the re­quired bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise be­fore any de­ter­mi­na­tion on dis­clo­sure is made.”

The Court fur­ther di­rect­ed E-ID­COT to no­ti­fy the claimant of its de­ci­sion with­in 28 days of the or­der.

E-ID­COT was or­dered to pay 80 per cent of the claimant’s le­gal costs.

In a me­dia re­lease, the court said the judg­ment is ex­pect­ed to have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for oth­er THA-owned spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­nies and pub­licly fund­ed cor­po­rate en­ti­ties op­er­at­ing in To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to com­pli­ance with trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty laws. It said the rul­ing re­in­forces the prin­ci­ple that pub­lic mon­ey, pub­lic func­tions, and pub­lic con­trol must at­tract pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty and that cor­po­rate struc­tures can­not be used to avoid law­ful scruti­ny un­der the act.

The is­sue was first raised by for­mer mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris who had threat­ened le­gal ac­tion af­ter the com­pa­ny failed to dis­close in­for­ma­tion about the ho­tel.

Isaac was rep­re­sent­ed by Christophe Ro­driguez and Thane Pierre, who were in­struct­ed by Adam Fer­nan­dez, while Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Stephan Ramkissoon, in­struct­ed by Kristy Mo­han, rep­re­sent­ed E-ID­COT.