Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

One month af­ter sev­er­al board mem­bers of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) chal­lenged the $30,000 month­ly pay­ments be­ing forked out to con­tract cor­po­rate le­gal ser­vices, moves are afoot to dis­band the state board. The Sun­day Guardian learned Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie is­sued the di­rec­tive last month, in­struct­ing all board and com­mit­tee meet­ings to cease with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

And, in an un­prece­dent­ed move, the line min­is­ter has al­so moved to over­turn the de­ci­sion tak­en by the board, in­sist­ing the agree­ment to con­tract cor­po­rate le­gal ser­vices should not be ter­mi­nat­ed but ex­tend­ed. The di­rec­tive comes al­most three weeks af­ter sev­en of the nine board mem­bers vot­ed against the $30,000 pay­ment, ques­tion­ing why the po­si­tion of cor­po­rate sec­re­tary was not be­ing ad­ver­tised.

It was at an Au­gust 3 meet­ing with the min­is­ter that the board mem­bers ob­ject­ed to an ex­ten­sion be­ing grant­ed to con­tract cor­po­rate/le­gal ser­vices. How­ev­er, in a shock­ing de­vel­op­ment, board mem­bers were told of the min­is­ter's di­rec­tive via e-mail two weeks ago by act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Leisa Kisto. The e-mail stat­ed: "The min­is­ter has in­formed that there shall be no more com­mit­tee and board meet­ings." Law firm Kaisel Ser­vices Ltd has been con­tract­ed to pro­vide cor­po­rate/le­gal ser­vices to the CDA since Ju­ly.

The law firm was al­so hired in May by the Na­tion­al Flour Mills, whose board is mired in con­tro­ver­sy af­ter six board mem­bers moved a vote of no con­fi­dence in chair­man Jacque­line Burgess, re­plac­ing her with di­rec­tor Suresh Ma­haraj-the broth­er of De­vesh Ma­haraj. That de­ci­sion, how­ev­er, was lat­er re­versed.

Cor­po­rate fees move from $15,000 to $30,000

How­ev­er, re­li­able sources said the board took is­sue with the agree­ment af­ter it was found that the sum be­ing paid to the law firm was al­most dou­ble the amount pre­vi­ous­ly paid to oth­er law firms. It is the sec­ond time with­in re­cent months that the con­tract for cor­po­rate le­gal ser­vices has sparked con­tention among the CDA board, which is chaired by Dan­ny Solomon.

Fol­low­ing a T&T Guardian ex­clu­sive re­port, the law firm of De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates was ter­mi­nat­ed from pro­vid­ing cor­po­rate/le­gal ser­vices af­ter fi­nan­cial state­ments sur­faced show­ing fees to the sum of $75,000 be­ing di­rect­ly paid to the law firm-which al­so rep­re­sents the CDA in sev­er­al mat­ters. The sum paid to De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates for cor­po­rate ser­vices was sep­a­rate from the le­gal fees in­curred by CDA for rep­re­sen­ta­tion in sev­er­al mat­ters.

A se­nior of­fi­cial com­ment­ed, "What tran­spired on Au­gust 3 is ab­solute­ly shock­ing. It is a clear at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late the board. No min­is­ter is sup­posed to get in­volved in the day to day op­er­a­tions of a state en­ter­prise. The board took a de­ci­sion not to ex­tend the con­tract and the min­is­ter is go­ing against the de­ci­sion...The role of the line min­is­ter at CDA has def­i­nite­ly been mixed up." Since Oc­to­ber 2011 a num­ber of law firms have pro­vid­ed cor­po­rate sec­re­tary ser­vices to the CDA, ow­ing to the va­cant po­si­tion.

Board clash over CEO

It was re­vealed that sev­er­al di­rec­tors had al­so vot­ed against Joycelin Har­g­reaves be­ing ap­point­ed as the act­ing CEO?of the CDA. She pre­vi­ous­ly filled the po­si­tion of chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer. "A vote was tak­en and sev­en out of the nine di­rec­tors were against the act­ing ap­point­ment," the of­fi­cial said. "A de­ci­sion was tak­en uni­lat­er­al­ly and the board de­ci­sion was al­so over­turned. What is the pur­pose of a board if all de­ci­sions are be­ing ig­nored? If such ac­tions are al­lowed then the ap­point­ments of boards are use­less."

Doc­u­ments re­vealed di­rec­tors had writ­ten to the chair­man in­di­cat­ing their in­ten­tion to move a vote of no con­fi­dence in Har­g­reaves at the next board meet­ing, which was sched­uled for lat­er this month. A copy of the let­ter was al­so sent to the min­is­ter, along with a sec­ond let­ter re­quest­ing an au­dit. Cit­ing grounds for the au­dit, the di­rec­tors list­ed the fol­low­ing:

• The lease agree­ment in­volv­ing EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd and the de­posit of a $2.4 mil­lion cheque from a third par­ty

• De­ci­sions tak­en with­out board ap­proval

• Prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures not be­ing fol­lowed in the award­ing of con­tracts

• Re­cruit­ment process flawed

"Busi­ness can­not con­tin­ue the way it is go­ing at the CDA," the se­nior of­fi­cial stat­ed. "Very soon all that is go­ing to be left is an emp­ty shell. The com­pa­ny can­not be­come self-sus­tain­able be­cause there are too many ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties tak­ing place and no one wants to be held ac­count­able."

Tewarie re­sponds:

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Tewarie nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied that he had giv­en a di­rec­tive to halt all board and com­mit­tee meet­ings at CDA. The min­is­ter said, "Meet­ings of the board are gen­er­al­ly called by the chair­men. I have in fact in­di­cat­ed with the chair­men and oth­er mem­bers of the board that I want to meet with them be­fore the bud­get. I have is­sued in­vi­ta­tions to them to at­tend a meet­ing with sev­er­al boards so we could dis­cuss mat­ters.

"I do not know what is hap­pen­ing at the board in terms of de­ci­sions. That is the job of the chair­man and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary." Asked if he had over­turned the board's de­ci­sion not to ex­tend the con­tract of the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Tewarie replied, "I re­ceived a let­ter from the chair­man mak­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion for the con­tract of the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary to be ex­tend­ed un­til the CDA is able to re­cruit a cor­po­rate sec­re­tary."

Asked if board mem­bers vot­ed against the ex­ten­sion of the con­tract to the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, the min­is­ter said, "I do not know what the board did. I did what I had to do." Mean­while, re­gard­ing the rental of prop­er­ties in Ch­aguara­mas in­volv­ing EOG and CDA, the min­is­ter said both par­ties had reached an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion and a lease agree­ment was signed. CDA chair­man Dan­ny Solomon could not be reached by phone on Fri­day and did not re­turn calls.