Vijay Patel gifts 30 NGOs with R75,000 each on his 75th birthday

Vijay Patel gifts 30 NGOs with R75,000 each on his 75th birthday | 02 October 2020
http://www.nation.sc/articles/6293/vijay-patel-gifts-30-ngos-with-r75000-each-on-his-75th-birthday

Saturday, 3 October 2020
Vijay Construction: End of the road?
Yesterday’s landmark Court of Appeal ruling seems to have finally pushed Vijay Construction beyond the point of no return. With the
construction giant on its knees and EEEL licking its lips after being awarded millions of euros, local businesses holding contracts with Vijay Construction are scratching their heads and foreign investors are rejoicing.
by W. J. May
Established in 1979 during the bygone era of Seychelles’ one-party-state, Vijay Construction has grown to become perhaps the number one dominant force in the country’s engineering and construction landscape.
Over the last four decades, the company – founded by enterprising 75-year-old businessman Vijay Patel – has tucked countless infrastructural projects under its belt that have changed the face of the Seychelles we all know today. Among the highlights are Eden Island, Six Senses Zil Pasyon, Raffles Hotel, the Plantation Club, Trinity House, the Hindu Temple and the National Library, to name but a few.
However, fast-forward to the present day and it appears that the Savoy Resort & Spa development, taken on by Vijay Construction in 2011, has proven to be the company’s watershed moment, the project around which everything started unravelling.
A legal dispute between Vijay Construction and the owner of the five-star resort, Eastern European Engineering Limited (EEEL), over alleged delays and defects in the works has been raging for the last eight years.
Over that time, EEEL has turned to courts in the UK, France and – most recently Seychelles – in an effort to recoup millions of euros it says it was owed after Vijay Construction allegedly broke the terms of six contracts it signed for the Savoy project.
The most recent chapter of the epic saga has been playing out this year, with EEEL attempting to convince Seychelles’ judicial system to enforce a 2015 UK court order, requiring Vijay Construction to hand over a little over €16.6 million.
One year prior to the UK legal battle, an arbitration court in Paris had similarly ruled in favour of EEEL, adding to the pressure on Vijay Construction’s shoulders. These rulings, however, were not enforceable in Seychelles as the island was not party to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the New York Convention).
To note, the New York Convention plays a crucial role in international arbitration by facilitating the enforcement of arbitral awards in foreign jurisdictions. The fact Seychelles was not party to it during the UK and French court cases meant EEEL could not enforce the foreign judgements locally, and so were unable to claim their dues.
However, by late June 2020, Supreme Court Judge Ellen Carolus declared that Vijay Construction must cough up the hefty sum, plus an additional €3.5 million in interest. Represented by veteran lawyer Bernard Georges, Vijay Construction has since then been pursuing every legal avenue in the book to escape paying roughly €20 million in damages.
An expired stay of execution, failed bank guarantee and several other twists and turns later, and the case fell into the lap of the Court of Appeal, as Vijay Construction made a last ditch attempt to have the Supreme Court decision overruled.
And in a hushed courtroom at Ile du Port yesterday afternoon, 2 October 2020, the long-running stalemate was finally resolved.
With Vijay Patel and his associates listening in closely, the three Court of Appeal judges presiding over the case – Justice Anthony Fernando, recently-appointed Justice Oagile Key Dingake and former Chief Justice Mathilda Twomey – delivered a stunning judgement which rejected Vijay Construction’s appeal, opening the door for EEEL to begin legal proceedings to collect the roughly €20 million they are owed.
Yet even in this historic situation of utmost certainty, there was a degree of controversy. This came via the fact the three judges could not reach a unanimous decision. While Justices Dingake and Twomey ruled in favour of EEEL, Justice Fernando leaned in favour of Vijay Construction, a big call which – if shared by one other judge – would have absolved the construction company from paying a dime.
Justice Fernando, who was sworn in as President of the Court of Appeal in June this year, based his decision partly on the issue that authenticated copies of the 2015 UK Court Order were never presented to the Supreme Court.
The British High Court’s Order that EEEL put forward to Judge Carolus “is not the original Order and only a photocopy with an indistinct seal of the court and does not bear the name of the judge who made the Order,” he declared, indicating that this meant the case against Vijay Construction was flawed from the start and should be thrown out entirely.
While Fernando did not even consider the grounds of Vijay Construction’s appeal, dismissing the case outright on a procedural technicality, Dingake and Twomey did.
One of the most significant pillars upon which Bernard Georges based his client’s appeal was that the New York Convention came into force in Seychelles this year, but only after the Supreme Court trial had ended.
Georges argued that Judge Carolus had allowed Seychelles’ accession to the New York Convention to influence her judgement in favour of EEEL, despite the fact it only became enforceable after the lawyers of both parties had already submitted their arguments.
This was not a view shared by Dingake or Twomey, with the former arguing that the New York Convention was “not the basis of the conclusions [the Supreme Court judge] reached.”
There is nothing to suggest EEEL “is attempting to abuse or exploit the judicial system, other than simply trying to obtain a remedy granted to it by the award and confirmed by several judgments,” Dingake added.
With the historic two-to-one split judgement made, EEEL representatives and their lawyer Alexandra Madeleine embraced in the courtroom, ecstatic the eight-year legal battle is now almost at its end.
“Today’s judgement is a victory for my clients, myself and for the whole of Seychelles,” a beaming Madeleine told press outside the courtroom. “This landmark decision shows that Seychelles respects foreign direct investment and that its courts can deliver judgements that uphold the rights of foreign investors.”
Understandably, Bernard Georges was slightly gloomier in his outlook.
“I feel disappointment because I thought we had a very good appeal. We had substantially decisive grounds but we are not the judges,” he said.
The judgment represents a crushing blow for Vijay Construction, one which Georges says he will be surprised to see the company recover from.
“We don’t have any further appeal process so it is the end of the road as far as this case is concerned. There are maybe other avenues to pursue but we have to consider that without clients. But essentially, I think that’s the end of Vijay Construction for the present,” he admitted.
EEEL are expected to begin the legal groundwork to seize Vijay Construction’s assets imminently. The business yet to make a formal declaration on whether it will remain operational, with an axe hanging over the fates of its 1,500 employees. One thing is for sure: choppy waters lie ahead.

https://www.facebook.com/todayinsey/photos/pcb.3342754062429047/3342751969095923/