Finance Minister Winston Jordan yesterday afternoon lost his bid to secure a stay on the High Court order that he be jailed by Monday if he does not pay over the more than US$2 million owed to Trinidad construction company Dipcon by the government for road construction works.
At a Full Court hearing yesterday morning, Justices Diana Insanally and Simone Morris-Ramlall denied Jordan’s application for the stay, while stating that they were of the view that his application had no merit.
Counsel for Jordan, Roysdale Forde, and Attorney General (AG) Basil Williams subsequently sought leave to appeal the Full Court’s ruling, but this too was denied.
The judges noted that in considering Jordan’s application for the stay, they also examined the likely prospect of success of an appeal, and concluded that none existed. It was in these circumstances that the court noted it would be denying Williams’ application for leave to appeal.
Forde’s request for leave to appeal was met with resistance from Dipcon’s attorney, Timothy Jonas, who said that such an application could not be made from the bar table following a Full Court ruling.
Citing case law, he said that the request ought to be made way of motion.
Forde, however, argued otherwise.
During yesterday’s hearing, Justice Insanally said they found Justice Priya Sewnarine-Beharry’s judgment committing Jordan to jail if he does not pay Dipcon to have been proper as well as her subsequent refusal to grant the AG a stay of her order.
Apart from denying Jordan’s request for the stay, the Full Court judges imposed $150,000 court cost against him, which he has to pay to Dipcon.
Though a no-show at all previous court hearings, Jordan was present at court yesterday, and appeared visibly dissatisfied with the court’s ruling.
Following her ruling, Justice Sewnarine-Beharry also ordered Jordan to pay court costs to Dipcon, which she set at $3 million.
On June 25th, the judge declared that Jordan was in contempt for not honouring the judgment of Justice Rishi Persaud, made four years ago, that Dipcon be paid the US$2,228,400 owed to it by government.
Justice Sewnarine-Beharry ordered that Jordan be imprisoned for 21 days if he does not make the payment by Monday. She had found that he had both the actus reus and mens rea for contempt of the court orders, which she said could be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
While Parliament had long-approved finances so that the judgment could be honoured, no money was ever paid over to the construction company.
As he had previously done, Williams yesterday argued that since Jordan was a minister of government, the court could not make a coercive order against him and that it had no jurisdiction to make such orders against the government.
His position has been that Dipcon’s application for the contempt of court order against Jordan was “misconceived” and amounted to an abuse of process.
Jonas had, however, maintained that while a court indeed has no jurisdiction to issue coercive orders against the government, Jordan was not the government, but a mere “individual,” against whom the contempt proceedings were mounted by his client. It is Jordan who is in “criminal contempt,” for not giving effect to Justice Persaud’s October 21st, 2015 judgment, Jonas had emphasised.
Referencing case law, counsel had said that ministers of government are not the state and could be held in contempt.
Williams, however, took issue with this position, arguing that in his capacity as Minister of Finance, Jordan fell under the umbrella of the government.
Jonas had noted that though both the Guyana Court of Appeal and the Carib-bean Court of Justice had upheld Justice Persaud’s ruling, Jordan had repeatedly acted in defiance of all those judgments.
