Renu­ka Singh

One com­pa­ny, Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SIS), has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over a half a bil­lion dol­lars in lu­cra­tive Gov­ern­ment con­tracts over the past four years. Its most re­cent con­tract–the $1.6 bil­lion Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant project–tips the scales at the hefti­est of all the con­tracts Gov­ern­ment has award­ed to this sin­gle com­pa­ny.

Com­pa­ny own­er Kr­ish­na Lal­la has been able to amass sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment con­tracts through state en­ter­pris­es and gov­ern­ment min­istries with­out ever be­ing called to ac­count for what has been deemed his "good for­tune with the Gov­ern­ment" by one se­nior lev­el em­ploy­ee. Both Lal­la and his com­pa­ny have man­aged to es­cape much pub­lic scruti­ny and have re­mained large­ly out of the pub­lic eye.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been spear­head­ing the call for more trans­paren­cy in the award of the con­tract, call­ing the con­tract a "rape of the trea­sury." But the Sun­day Guardian has tab­u­lat­ed that SISL has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed far more than that over the pe­ri­od of four years.

Lal­la's com­pa­ny, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior lev­el em­ploy­ee, has var­i­ous sub­sidiaries, all tied to the same of­fice. While SISL's Web site lists just eight sub­sidiary com­pa­nies, the Sun­day Guardian learned Lal­la is fi­nan­cial­ly linked to more than twice that num­ber, which has ten­dered for and has been award­ed var­i­ous con­tracts.

Lal­la is al­so cur­rent­ly in a le­gal wran­gle with for­mer UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er over a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar cash in­jec­tion in­to then UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day's po­lit­i­cal cam­paign in 2007. The mat­ter reached to the Privy Coun­cil but was re­turned with­out judg­ment to the lo­cal High Court for de­lib­er­a­tion.One of Warn­er's at­tor­ney's said Lal­la con­tributed some $26 mil­lion to Pan­day's cam­paign but when that bid failed, at­tempt­ed to get back some of the mon­ey by say­ing it was a loan and not fi­nan­cial sup­port.

It was in those court hear­ings that Lal­la was linked to 18 lo­cal com­pa­nies.

Su­per sub­sidiaries

The eight sub­sidiary com­pa­nies which have al­so en­joyed gov­ern­ment con­tracts, among them Mar­shall As­phalt Pavers, Prime Equip­ment Rentals, Qual­i­ty Re­frac­to­ry In­su­la­tion Ser­vices, Scaf­fold­ing Pro­fes­sion­als, Phoenix Weld­ing & Fab­ri­ca­tion and Casa Con­trac­tors Ltd, were al­so tied to small­er pri­vate con­struc­tion con­tracts.

It is through these two last sub­sidiaries that Lal­la worked on the Prime Min­is­ter's pri­vate res­i­dence in Philip­pines and To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) leader Ash­worth Jack's pri­vate res­i­dence in To­ba­go.

The com­pa­ny is far-reach­ing, even dab­bling in se­cu­ri­ty with the pur­chase of Ex­ec­u­tive Body­guard Ser­vices Ltd (EB­SL) for US$14 mil­lion last year. That com­pa­ny has al­so been favoured by the Gov­ern­ment and was in the mid­dle of a con­tro­ver­sial con­tract to guard the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice last year.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that Lal­la's com­pa­ny was hired by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for work at the e-Teck project but was dis­missed in 2006 af­ter it "failed to meet con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions" the se­nior staffer said.Work on the Cou­va In­ter­change, the se­nior staff mem­ber said, al­so had to be re­done af­ter the "as­phalt failed."

Head of the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (Pure) Hay­den Phillips con­firmed that the com­pa­ny had to re­vis­it the site and do more work af­ter it was de­liv­ered, but he said most con­trac­tors took ad­van­tage of a win­dow (de­fects li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od) to do touch-ups on work al­ready de­liv­ered."It was af­ter the de­fects li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od lapsed (three months), which is com­mon," he said.

Gov­ern­ment clients

�2 Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture

�2 Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd

�2 Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment

�2 Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nipdec)

�2 Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion

�2 Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture

�2 Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­prise Ltd (PSAEL)

�2Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EMDB)

�2 Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Plipde­co)

�2 Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T

�2 Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty

�2 T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion

�2 Petrotrin

�2 Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny

�2 Am­mo­nia, Urea, Melamine Plant

Sam­ple of gov­ern­ment con­tracts:

�2 2012 Febeau Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School–$18 mil­lion

�2 2012 Shouter Bap­tist school–$28 mil­lion

�2 2012 Cou­va In­ter­change –$70 mil­lion

�2 2013 Dis­abil­i­ty Cen­tre –$11.5 mil­lion

�2 2013 Siparia Mar­ket –$56 mil­lion

�2 2013 Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty

–$232 mil­lion

�2 2014 Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Fa­cil­i­ty–$1.6 bil­lion.