George Knight: Justice system delivers

When the National Contracts Commission (NCC) pulled the plug on Cenitech Engineering Company in 2013, revoking its contractor licence, the company not only lost out on billions of dollars in government contract but the company’s reputation took a massive blow.

The Supreme Court will shortly assess the damages suffered by the company on account of the revocation without a fair hearing, which the Full Court in a Judicial Review has found was an infringement of the claimant’s natural right to justice.

But the company’s chief executive officer, George Knight, is questioning how one quantifies discrediting a company’s reputation.

Cenitech’s contractor licence was revoked based on allegations that the company had submitted “erroneous information”, in the tender application/registration for a Grade 1 contract.

Hauled before court

Not only had the company lost a $1.4 billion contract, which it had just won but Knight and six other employees were slapped with charges and hauled before the parish court in July 2014. The charges were, however, dropped in 2019.

In the aftermath of the unfortunate series of events, the company struggled to stay afloat and barely survived based on small contracts and subcontracts that it obtained based on the recommendations of friends and family.

When asked to quantify the loss that the company had suffered between the time that it lost the licence and the charges against the workers dropped, Knight admitted that it was difficult.

“I don’t even know if it can be quantified because it’s so large, because how do you quantify (after) completely destroying somebody reputation? he asked.

“We operated well below our capacity, we had to do every possible thing that we could just to keep the company from closing its door,” Knight recalled.

On top of the hit to his reputation and his company, Knight said he and his employees also had to contend with the shame from being criminally charged.

“We were criminally charged and completely embarrassed,” he said alluding to being negatively portrayed in the nightly news on account of the events.

At the time when he was charged and jailed for 10 days, Knight said “I was thinking then that there was no justice in Jamaica”.

However, Knight is now heaping praises on the justice system.

According to him in 2013 when he was charged and was at a loss as to why he was arrested and the charges laid against him, “I realised that I was in a situation that only a proper justice system could resolve”.

“People complain about the system here but I am very happy that the system worked, and I can stand up and say there is still justice in Jamaica because I believe that the conclusion that the court came to was the right one,” he declared.

The company had taken the NCC to court along with The Integrity Commission [formerly the Contractor General of Jamaica], the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries who was then Roger Clarke, now deceased, and the Attorney General of Jamaica, second, third and fourth respondents, respectively.

However, the court in its decision ruled that only the Commission and the Attorney General were accountable, while noting that the other two respondents could not be held liable.

Cenitech had argued that it was not given a fair hearing before the licence was revoked, and due to that decision had lost a valuable government contract.

The respondents in their arguments countered that there was “no right to a hearing” and that even if the hearing had been held, the licence would have still been revoked.

Chairman of the NCC, Raymond McIntyre, in outlining the reasons for revoking the licence, noted that the company’s financial soundness, technical and managerial experience, and general expertise had been directly impacted by the alleged erroneous information that it had found and that the NCC “was not satisfied of the soundness which it had presumed at the times when the applications for registration were approved”.

The erroneous information concerns Cenitech’s assertion that it had been in operation since 1989. The company had indicated that it had registered in January 2012 but the NCC claimed its financial records had suggested that it had not operated since 2011 when it had undergone a name change.

The NCC had found, among other things, that the company before its name change had not operated for 16 years and that the project for which the company had relied on for experience started in 2010 when the company was not in existence and that at least two of its workers had that written on their résumés that they worked with the company in 2010.

Cenitech in response provided explanations for all the discrepancies which were not challenged or refuted by the respondents.

The court also highlighted that based on the information submitted by NCC, it appears that the issue was not that Cenitech had submitted “erroneous information” but that the company did not qualify for the Grade I contract.