Kevon Felmine

Two cor­rup­tion probes in­to op­er­a­tions at the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) in­ten­si­fied yes­ter­day when of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion po­lice and Fraud Squad ar­rest­ed a Fyz­abad con­trac­tor and sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 10 am, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion CID, led by ASP Michael Sook­er, Sgt Jitin­dra Tool­er­am and Sgt Andy Mo­hammed, went to the of­fice of Cal­i­for­nia/Point Lisas coun­cil­lor Alif Mo­hammed and ar­rest­ed the 78-year-old con­trac­tor for bribery.

Hours lat­er, Fraud Squad of­fi­cers en­tered the CT­TRC's Rail­way Road of­fice and ar­rest­ed three em­ploy­ees from the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment, fol­low­ing a probe in­to a con­tract for the in­stal­la­tion of out­door ex­er­cise equip­ment in San Pablo and Todd's Road.

Mo­hammed told the T&T Guardian that the con­trac­tor was award­ed a con­tract to build a box drain along Pierre Street, Cal­i­for­nia, but the work was poor­ly done. He said he raised his con­cern with the coun­cil and rec­om­mend­ed that the con­trac­tor should not be paid un­til the work was sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly done. He said a tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer who was sent to eval­u­ate the work con­curred that the work was not done prop­er­ly.

While at the site on Thurs­day, he said, the con­trac­tor ap­proached him and of­fered him the bribe. How­ev­er, Mo­hammed in­stead record­ed the con­ver­sa­tion on his mo­bile phone and hand­ed this over to the po­lice.

"Most brazen, he came to me and said 'let me talk to you young boy.' He said, 'Let me give you some hun­dreds and we will call it off." I said 'ex­cuse me' and then he said he will give me some thou­sands to call it off.

"I asked him if he was of­fer­ing me a bribe. I told him to hold on and I put my phone to tape and, with­out him re­al­is­ing that, the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed again. He said if not $1,000, he would give me $2,000," Mo­hammed said.

He said he told the con­trac­tor that it would take ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5,000 to cor­rect the prob­lems on the drains, but was again of­fered the mon­ey and asked not to make any ob­jec­tions.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, CT­TRC chair­man Hen­ry Awong said he did not have any in­for­ma­tion on the con­trac­tor's ar­rest, as he had on­ly heard of it through the grapevine.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, po­lice went to the CT­TRC's of­fice and held em­ploy­ees who were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for cor­rup­tion. Awong said while three em­ploy­ees were ar­rest­ed, he was un­clear of the al­le­ga­tions against them. His own in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed it may be re­lat­ed to the in­stal­la­tion of out­door ex­er­cise equip­ment at the San Pablo Recre­ation Ground and the Todd's Road Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre, which was de­layed.

He said a con­tract val­ued at $147,500 was award­ed to a con­trac­tor dur­ing the 2014/15 fis­cal year, but cheques and oth­er doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to this were seized by Fraud Squad of­fi­cers at the CT­TRC last Oc­to­ber.