Max­ie Cuffie

If a his­to­ry of of­fi­cial cor­rup­tion in T&T were ever to be writ­ten, one sus­pects it would be­gin with the gas sta­tion rack­et. This was well chron­i­cled in the records of what came to be known as the Gas Sta­tion Rack­et En­quiry of 1965, in which Gene Miles emerged as a star wit­ness.

Tes­ti­mo­ny at the in­quiry sug­gest­ed the in­volve­ment of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing for­mer min­is­ter of pe­tro­le­um and mines, John O'Hal­lo­ran, in award­ing lu­cra­tive gas sta­tion li­cences for kick­backs. Ma­jor for­tunes were made through the award of those li­cences.

The true lega­cy of the gas sta­tion rack­et, how­ev­er, is that it set a tem­plate for do­ing busi­ness with the State, from which we are yet to re­cov­er.

In the in­ter­est of full dis­clo­sure: on De­cem­ber 19, 2003, I sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP), which was a re­sponse to a pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ment for "Re­quest for Pro­pos­al to Op­er­ate Ser­vice Sta­tions, Quik­shoppes and Con­ve­nience Stores."

There were 13 sites be­ing of­fered at the time. It seemed like a good busi­ness propo­si­tion and, with the sup­port of my bankers, I put in my bid just be­fore the dead­line, af­ter pay­ing ear­li­er the $500 fee for a ten­der doc­u­ment. My re­search showed that, with the used-car in­dus­try be­gin­ning to take off, to­tal ve­hi­cle sales had moved from 7,140 in 1995 to 23,568 in 2002 (a 330 per cent in­crease), with all the im­pli­ca­tions for fu­el sales and con­ve­nience store pur­chas­es that would en­tail.

Two friends, who were sim­i­lar­ly en­tre­pre­neur­ial and with no po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, had al­so sub­mit­ted bids for oth­er ser­vice sta­tions.

Months passed with­out our hear­ing any­thing and al­though my friends soon be­gan to de­spair that the gas sta­tions were go­ing to be award­ed based on the O'Hal­lo­ran mod­el, I ad­vised them to trust the process, since we had all sub­mit­ted well-re­searched pro­pos­als and had been able to ac­cu­mu­late teams with sol­id re­tail in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence.

Even­tu­al­ly, we were con­tact­ed on­ly to be in­formed that the process had been scrapped with­out ex­pla­na­tion: NP had de­cid­ed not to pur­sue its fran­chis­ing strat­e­gy and all ap­pli­cants would be re­fund­ed their ten­der de­posits.

Al­though no of­fi­cial word had been giv­en, there was talk that the ghost of O'Hal­lo­ran was, 37 years lat­er, still hov­er­ing over the PNM, and the gov­ern­ment of the day was re­luc­tant to make any awards which could lead to po­lit­i­cal fall­out.

Nei­ther of my friends fell in­to the cat­e­go­ry of friend or sup­port­er of the PNM, and like me at the time, had no po­lit­i­cal strings to pull. They shrugged off the dis­ap­point­ment and both sub­se­quent­ly em­i­grat­ed. I lost in­ter­est in the gas sta­tion busi­ness.

By No­vem­ber 2011, NP was again invit­ing pro­pos­als to op­er­ate its Quik­shoppes and ser­vice sta­tions and, al­though I now count­ed NP's CEO Ken­neth Mo­hammed as an old school friend, I knew I would not be sub­mit­ting a ten­der.

There were con­stant changes to the clos­ing dates for ap­pli­ca­tions, which were first in­vit­ed in late 2011 and then again a year lat­er, when the clos­ing dates changed at least three times. This time, I sus­pect­ed the in­vis­i­ble hand of po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tors in the en­tire process and won­dered whether the cor­po­rate strat­e­gy was in­tend­ed to strength­en NP's bot­tom line or re­ward PP friends and fi­nanciers. While I have every con­fi­dence in Mo­hammed's in­tegri­ty, I have been around long enough to know the pres­sures un­der which the CEOs of state en­ter­prise op­er­ate, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion, and did not even make a call to in­quire.

Al­so, I did not think the gas sta­tion busi­ness is what is used to be and the present pro­pos­als are noth­ing but an at­tempt by NP to pass on the risks to fran­chisees.

In 2011 NP's prof­its fell from $64.9 mil­lion to $34.9 mil­lion and with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter hav­ing telegraphed the re­duc­tion of the fu­el sub­sidy, low­er mar­gins can be ex­pect­ed for both NP and its fu­el sta­tions. NP, how­ev­er, ad­ver­tised the deal­er­ships as a ma­jor busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty.

It did not sur­prise me then, when the Ex­press last week­end pub­lished a list of suc­cess­ful ten­der awardees, the prin­ci­pals of which read like a Who's Who of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. There was Dami­an Ly­der, the hus­band of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Ju­nior Min­is­ter Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine; Nyree Al­fon­so, the chair­man of the board of First Cit­i­zens; and sev­er­al oth­er cur­rent or for­mer board mem­bers of state en­ter­pris­es.

The names of for­mer Unit Trust ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Clar­ry Benn and for­mer PNM Point Fortin may­or Fran­cis Bertrand were thrown in for good mea­sure.

Now it could be that the list of the awardees sub­mit­ted the best bids pos­si­ble and the fact that they were, in the main, promi­nent sup­port­ers of the PP, was on­ly co­in­ci­den­tal, but the odds do not favour it.

The re­al truth of the mat­ter is that in 1965, when the list of those award­ed fu­el-sta­tion deal­er­ships was such a big thing that it ne­ces­si­tat­ed a com­mis­sion of en­quiry that has gone down in­to leg­end, in 2013 the large-scale award of sim­i­lar li­cences was not even a front-page sto­ry.

It is a cause for de­spair when one hears the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy de­scrib­ing as wastage the con­struc­tion un­der the PNM of a $440 mil­lion head­quar­ters for Petrotrin, which has 5,000-plus em­ploy­ees, while ap­prov­ing an $800 mil­lion plan for head­quar­ters for the NGC (which has 800 work­ers), tipped to be built by a par­ty fi­nancier who worked on the home of the Prime Min­is­ter and an­oth­er PP par­ty leader.

It is then easy to un­der­stand why the Cab­i­net would think noth­ing of ap­prov­ing $6.8 mil­lion to pull a firetruck back on­to the road.

?Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.