Former President Donald Ramotar has been awarded $20 million in damages after winning a defamation suit against the Kaieteur News, Kaieteur Radio, its Publisher Glenn Lall and former Editor Adam Harris.
In a ruling delivered yesterday morning, High Court Judge Navindra Singh said he found that the statements complained of by Ramotar (the Claimant), which were broadcasted by the Kaieteur group (the defendants), did in fact defame the former Head of State.
The judge dismissed the defences of justification and fair comment raised by the defendants and in assessing damages against them, awarded Ramotar $20 million with interest at a rate of 6% per annum from June 26th, 2019 when the action was filed, to date of judgment, and 4% per annum thereafter, until fully paid.
In addition, Ramotar was awarded $2.4 million in costs which has to also be borne by the defendants.
Back in 2019, Ramotar had sued the Kaieteur group for in excess of $40 million for what he said were defamatory statements targeting him in a series of publications and broadcasts about the investigation by the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) into oil blocks that were awarded during his tenure as President.
Ramotar had referenced a May 31st, 2019 press statement he had issued addressing the complaints raised, but said that while the statement was extensively carried by other media houses, the defendants refused to publish it and instead impugned his good character.
Ramotar said that the Kaieteur News falsely and maliciously carried an innuendo and published “boldly and sensationally” what he described as a full page article with the blazing headline “Wake up Guyana!!!”
He said that the article sought to compare him and former Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade.
Photographs of him and Wade, he said, were included in the inset of a photograph depicting “alleged stolen oil blocks in Senegal and Guyana.”
In finding the statements to have been defamatory, Justice Singh in applying a plethora of case law authorities said that the publications “clearly attacked” Ramotar’s “character, labelling him as a dishonest person that engages in fraudulent or criminal practices and further that he engaged in such conduct when he was the President,” by stealing from the citizens.
The judge said the publications “unmistakably” conveyed the impression that the oil blocks were sold and/or disposed of, and no longer belonged to the people of Guyana, when in fact agreements signed by the Claimant only granted Petroleum Prospecting Licences for the purpose of carrying out prospecting operations in the Kaieteur and Canje Blocks, a fact which the judge further added “must have been known to the Defendants or easily discoverable by examining the contracts.”
The judge noted in his written ruling that while Lall disputed Ramotar’s assertion that no oil had been discovered in those blocks at the time the agreements were signed, he led no evidence to show otherwise.
Justice Singh referenced, also, Lall’s testimony admitting that cartoons published by his newspaper of images of bandits and/or thieves, were intended to convey that Ramotar had taken part in a corrupt US$100,000,000 deal in which he signed away and sold the oil blocks for his benefit.
The judge pointed out, too, that the comparison of Ramotar’s purported actions to that of Wade signing away oil blocks to a convicted drug lord, in itself constituted a defamatory imputation, while noting that Lall had in fact testified: “I agree that the ad was saying that the same thing happened in Guyana. That Ramotar did what President Wade did.”
“I agree that it says that the blocks were given away secretly and in a corrupt manner,” the judge quoted Lall as saying in reference to the publications complained of by Ramotar.
“In this regard the Court finds that the publications are defamatory in nature,” Justice Singh declared.
On his examination of the defences raised, again on an application of case law authorities, the judge said that the defendants failed to lead any evidence or establish that the signing of the agreements granting the Petroleum Prospecting Licences were clandestinely done by the Claimant; or that the entities that received prospecting licences by the agreements were connected to the Claimant in any way, “much less corruptly.”
Justice Singh said, too, that the defendants failed to establish that the Claimant benefitted financially from any sale/transfer of the licences by those entities, to have justified such statements and inferences.
“In fact the statement released to the press by the Claimant prior to the Defendants’ publications ought to have informed the Defendants and caused them to verify the truthfulness of the publications prior to publishing same multiple times,” the judge asserted.
Noting further the Defendants’ failure “to produce one iota of evidence to support the intended and conveyed message” of the publications and broadcasts that Ramotar signed the agreements to corruptly benefit, Justice Singh said that both defences of fair comment and justification advanced by the Kaieteur group failed.
Quoting from a case law, the judge noted, “Like fraud, counsel must not put a plea of justification on the record unless he has clear and sufficient evidence to support it.”
“The publications and broadcasts are therefore defamatory of the Claimant and would tend to lower his standing in society in the estimation of right-thinking members of society,” Justice Singh ruled.
Ramotar was represented by attorney C V Satram, while the Kaieteur group was represented by attorney Nigel Hughes.
