PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Feb 12, CMC – The Court of Appeal has awarded more than TT$5.47 million (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) to former governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT), Jwala Rambarran, after it upheld a lower court ruling that he had been wrongfully dismissed by the Government in December 2015.
Justices Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mohammed and Peter Rajkumar agreed that High Court Judge, Justice Devindra Rampersad was correct to rule that Rambarran was treated unfairly and his constitutional right to protection of the law was breached, even as they disagreed over the compensation that was awarded.
The Court of Appeal said the High Court judge was correct to award Rambarran significant compensation based on his monthly base salary of TT$173,435 plus allowances but noted that he was wrong to award him an additional TT$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 two million dollars.
In his dissenting judgment, Justice Rajkumar ruled that Rambarran should have only received half the performance bonuses and that he should have been given an additional TT$100,000 in compensation for the distress and inconvenience he endured.
The Court of Appeal granted a two-week stay of execution to give the Attorney General’s Office time to consider the judgments and decide whether to mount a final appeal to the United Kingdom-based Privy Council.
Attorney Anand Ramlogan, SC, has said 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. His removal came soon after he had announced that Trinidad and Tobago was in a recession.
Rambarran also claimed he lost out on a position as a senior advisor to the Washington-based G-24 Secretariat as Finance Minister Colm Imbert had forwarded the press release regarding his dismissal to the official recruiting him.
In the ruling, Justice Bereaux said that Rambarran was not treated fairly by Imbert and that “he was not told the specific allegations against him, nor was he given any real opportunity to respond to the charges.
“At minimum, the minister was required to tell the respondent that Cabinet was considering terminating his appointment and why, while permitting the respondent the opportunity to respond,” he said, adding 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.
CMC/aj/ir/2025