Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi says it’s “fake news” to sug­gest a court chal­lenge over the dis­missal of CEPEP con­trac­tors has col­lapsed, in­sist­ing the case was sim­ply with­drawn so it could be re­filed cor­rect­ly.

The High Court claim, brought by Stephen Samuel’s Con­trac­tors Ltd, was filed on Ju­ly 3 and with­drawn with­in 24 hours. The Gov­ern­ment ac­cused the con­trac­tor of abus­ing the le­gal process and pur­su­ing a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed case. But Al-Rawi said the re­al is­sue was a tech­ni­cal­i­ty.

“It turns out that many com­pa­nies work­ing in CEPEP were, in fact, the vic­tims of an ex­er­cise to delist and dereg­is­ter com­pa­nies at the com­pa­nies reg­istry,” he told PNM sup­port­ers over the week­end. “And it turns out that the claimant in one of the con­trac­tors step­ping for­ward to rep­re­sent one of the claims found him­self, with­out his knowl­edge, in that sit­u­a­tion. Easy fix, you with­draw, you bring a new one, be­cause they have 336 con­trac­tors. Very sim­ple fix.”