Dr Paul Chen-Young has published a book on his experience with the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) and the Jamaican court system which he describes as a “very personal story” that he felt “had to be told for this generation and for posterity to show the almost impossible conditions under which a citizen was able to stand up and fight the mighty power of the state”.
The book, titled Decades awaiting justice in Jamaica, is essentially a compendium of legal submissions with some elaboration.
“The legal tribulations described in this book, and the arguments presented, provide a repository of outstanding legal submissions which should be valuable legal reference material in relevant commercial lawsuits,” said Chen-Young whose Eagle Financial Group was taken over by Finsac in 1997, and a forensic audit initiated into the operations of the group.
The following year Chen-Young faced a $900-million lawsuit brought by Eagle Merchant Bank and Crown Eagle — two of the companies he founded. He subsequently left the island.
Chen-Young has since repeatedly insisted that people connected to Finsac have made relentless efforts to discredit him and destroy his career.
The book starts with the definition of justice, which typically references a system of law in which every person receives his/her due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal.
The definition refers both to the process [of going through the system] and the outcome [of “what's due” after fairness of process from the system].
Noting that it is now 20 years since Finsac commenced legal claims against him and applied what he described as “the ongoing draconian mareva injunction” during which period his assets have been frozen, Chen-Young states that when the lawsuits were filed in 1998, his attorneys filed a motion claiming that “further and better particulars” were needed before the case could be tried.
In 1999, the court ruled in favour of Finsac, resulting in an appeal filed by Chen-Young which he eventually lost in 2002.
In 2003, the case was tried and was concluded in May 2004. Thereafter the court ruled against Chen-Young in May 2006.
The book includes submissions by his attorneys in which they argued that the judge should have recused himself from the case. In addition, Chen-Young cites various issues raised by his attorneys in the appeal against the judge's ruling.
The final Court of Appeal legal arguments, he notes, were concluded in December 2013. Since then, the three Court of Appeal judges who heard the appeal have all retired “and there is uncertainty about when and if a decision will be forthcoming”.
Chen-Young also states that the book cites the legal effort by Finsac to deprive him from receiving payments approved by the trial judge in 2006 for living expenses and legal fees when it obtained an order from the court immediately after the ruling by the trial judge to cut off the approved payments.
“This ruling was successfully appealed on the grounds that 'a judge of co-ordinate jurisdiction did not have jurisdiction or power to set aside the decision of another judge of similar jurisdiction',” Chen-Young states.
Chen-Young writes that the lawsuits were filed not only in Jamaica but that Finsac used the court ruling to obtain an ex parte expedited motion, in 2007, against him and associated companies in Miami.
The Miami lawsuit, he insists, ruined him and an associated company. Subsequently, his attorney filed a motion to dissolve the temporary injunction. The motion was successful and the injunction was lifted.
Chen-Young states that in 2017 his attorney filed for damages from wrongful injunction claiming US$3 million, inclusive of the US$1.5 million bond which the Miami judge ordered to be placed by the Finsac entities but which failed to do so.
“It is my hope that this book will draw attention to the legal treatment meted out against one who demonstrated entrepreneurial drive and professionalism over the three-decade period from 1968 to 1997 when much was accomplished to benefit Jamaica and our people,” Chen-Young writes in the book.
“The legal tribulations described in this book, and the arguments presented, provide a repository of outstanding submissions which should be valuable reference material in relevant commercial lawsuits. To this end I would have made a useful contribution. And to the extent that by drawing attention to the woeful administration of justice in Jamaica, if it somehow impacts favourably on improving the justice system, then that would be an accomplishment,” he adds.
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