Vijay Construction thrown under the bus by politicians
The Vijay Construction (Limited) company had figured it all out and with many friends in powerful places – it would be hard to get to it and the glasshouse was fully protected by all in US and LDS. The compensation claim case between EEEL & VCL was done and dusted never to reappear again. The eloquent lawyer from Oxford had it all sealed and stamped and stored away in the archive for posterity. The chickens were counted and allocated before the eggs were even hatched.
In November 2019, the Seychelles Cabinet of Ministers approved the accession to the long out-standing ‘New York Convention’; which is the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. In that particular case between EEEL v VCL it had come from the Paris Industrial Tribunal. Where EEEL had won their compensation claim against VCL to the tune of 20 million Euros. After a protracted battle in various foreign legal jurisdiction it finally arrived in the Seychelles Juris-diction for enforecement of the award against VCL. But, EEL failed to convince the court in their favour.
The 6t National Assembly of Seychelles under the full control of the LDS majority ratified the said ‘New York Convention’ on the 10th December 2019. In early 2020 the Internal Affairs Committee (IAC) in the National Assembly started to complain that they find it ‘regrettable that until now the accession instruments have not yet been presented to the United Nations to formalize the process. This is having a negative impact on potential inwards foreign direct investment into our country. It was therefore resolved that a letter regarding this matter be sent to the President to seek his authority to get the matter resolved at the soonest’. The seven members of the IAC in the 6th National Assembly were; Hon. Jean-Francois Ferrari (Chair), Hon. Clifford Andre (Vice), Hon. Flory Larue, Hon. John Hoareau, Hon. Waven William, Hon. Jude Valmont and Hon. Noline Sophola.
On 3 February 2020, the Seychelles deposited its instrument of accession and, under Article XII (2) of the Convention, it came into force for The Seychelles on 3 May 2020, 90 days thereafter… And the EEEL followed with another application in The Supreme Court of Seychelles to enforce the Foreign Arbitral Awards and this time the ruling was in their favour. The VCL appeal has also been rejected.
News, has since reached this newspaper that there is more to this story than meets the eye. This is why an inquiry has to start in the matter to establish that the end results was achieved without complicity of the IAC or any other member of the 6th National Assembly of Seychelles. There are allegations that a prominent member of the IAC was very involved in achieving the desired results. There are also allegations that the LDS head in the National Assembly took a leisure trip to Mos-cow last year and that it was also linked to that case.
It has also been reported to us that after the ‘Convention’ was ratified it was brought back for a second time before the National Assembly to add another clause to it. This was done in an attempt to provide protection to pending cases in the Seychelles jurisdiction. These are highly corruptive practices by both the Executive and the National Assembly. There are allegations of high corruption involving this case, which must be investigated in order not to tarnish the image of Seychelles on the international stage. Will the ACCS be man enough or woman enough in that case, to pursue the matter in order to achieve justice and fairness for VCL?
