High Court gives BDS Ltd one day to pay PM Gonsalves $180,000

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves should by today — Friday — have received $180,000 of the approximately $250,000 the court awarded him in a defamation suit against BDS Ltd — owners of Nice Radio.{{more}}

On Wednesday, at the High Court, Master V. Georgis Taylor-Alexander ordered that lawyers for BDS Ltd deliver the money by 10 a.m. yesterday (Thursday) to Grahame Bollers, lawyer for the prime minister.

The judge on Wednesday also appointed Peter Alexander as one of two receiver managers for BDS Ltd.

Alexander will receive the balance of the money owed to Gonsalves.

The money that was ordered paid was in relation to a defamation suit filed between 2002 and 2003 against Elwardo “E.G.” Lynch, then host of the New Democratic Party’s New Times radio programme, and BDS Limited, owners of Nice Radio, after Lynch made comments about the financing of a trip to Rome by the prime minister and some members of his family.

In July 2011, after they had exhausted all their appeals, Lynch and BDS Ltd were ordered by the Court of Appeal to pay the prime minister damages of $140,000, plus $20,000 costs at the High Court, the cost in the Court of Appeal of $20,000 and five per cent interest from the 2008 date of assessment.

In an interview after the ruling by the Court of Appeal, Douglas De Freitas, owner of Nice Radio, had told SEARCHLIGHT his company could not afford to pay the fine.

On October 30, 2012, lawyer Kay Bacchus-Browne and social activist Junior Bacchus launched an appeal for financial assistance from the public to pay the outstanding debt. Last month, Bacchus told SEARCHLIGHT the appeal had raised $138,000.