Clevon Raphael

If rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port were im­ple­ment­ed, mil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey would not have been sub­se­quent­ly mis­man­aged or cor­rupt­ly spent.For­mer mem­ber of the com­mis­sion Vic­tor Hart is un­der­lin­ing this point on the eve of the tenth an­niver­sary of the pre­sen­ta­tion of the re­port by the probers head­ed by for­mer chief jus­tice Mr Clin­ton Bernard.

Mr Hart knocks both the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tions for sit­ting down on the doc­u­ment al­though parts of it were leaked to a Sun­day news­pa­per.Even the ex­pen­sive Uff in­quiry could have been avoid­ed, he said.

Q: Mr Hart, be­fore get­ting down to brass tacks, how does one get ap­point­ed to these com­mis­sions of in­quiry?

A: (Half smil­ing at his re­tire­ment home in To­ba­go, Thurs­day af­ter­noon).Af­ter re­tire­ment, I took up res­i­dence in Grena­da with the in­ten­tion of see­ing out the rest of my life there. How­ev­er, my wife Pat and I re­turned to T&T in time for me to be ap­proached by then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Glen­da More­an-Phillips to serve on the Pi­ar­co Air­port Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, which was head­ed by for­mer chief jus­tice Clin­ton Bernard.

I well re­mem­ber Mrs More­an-Phillips, telling me that I was be­ing in­vit­ed to do na­tion­al ser­vice for three months. But the in­quiry last­ed 16 months.

In ret­ro­spect, was it worth your time and ef­fort?

(A some­what doubt­ful ex­pres­sion, al­though ex­press­ing oth­er­wise).With­out a doubt, it was a life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me. It was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to give back some­thing to the coun­try that gave me my UK ed­u­ca­tion. It al­so af­ford­ed me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use my pro­fes­sion­al skills as a char­tered quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or and project man­ag­er to see the po­ten­tial for cor­rup­tion in un­reg­u­lat­ed pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment and the harm that it could do to a coun­try and its peo­ple.

I re­call in­ter­view­ing you on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in Trinidad be­fore pack­ing your bags to go and plant peas (a hearty laugh) in the sis­ter isle, when you were very pas­sion­ate about this sour pro­cure­ment busi­ness?

Yes, it made me re­solve to spend the re­main­der of my re­tire­ment in fight­ing cor­rup­tion and that led to my be­com­ing a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute and in be­ing the chair for three years. That, in turn, made me a strong ad­vo­cate for T&T mem­ber­ship of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) to pro­tect the peo­ple's oil and gas pat­ri­mo­ny, an ini­tia­tive that I have been chair­ing for al­most three years.

You spoke about po­ten­tial acts of cor­rup­tion in the pro­cure­ment process...

Clevon, it is im­por­tant to note that com­mis­sion­ers are not ap­point­ed to de­ter­mine the guilt or in­no­cence of any­one. Our job was to in­vite ev­i­dence from per­sons known to be in­volved in the project and from the gen­er­al pub­lic who might have in­for­ma­tion, so as to de­ter­mine if, on the face of it, some per­sons had a case to an­swer. It was al­so our du­ty to make rec­om­men­da­tions on the re­form of sys­tems, prac­tices and pro­ce­dures so as to re­duce the chances of a re­cur­rence of the prob­lems iden­ti­fied.

Mr Hart, what ever hap­pened to the re­port?

(Ad­just­ing him­self on his chair, while sip­ping a glass of iced tea pre­pared by Pat) Clevon, ten years ago, we gave pres­i­dent Richards three copies of the re­port on Au­gust 30, 2003–one for his use, one for then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and one for at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.Mr Man­ning made a state­ment in Par­lia­ment that the re­port had been re­ceived and would be tabled in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter it was 'sani­tised.'

Did you feel 'a how,' as the young peo­ple would say, over that sani­tis­ing' re­mark?

Clevon, giv­en the care we took in writ­ing the re­port, none of the com­mis­sion­ers saw the need for sani­tis­ing. De­spite many calls for its pub­li­ca­tion, noth­ing fur­ther was heard about the re­port un­til April 18, 2010, when it was leaked by An­dre Ba­goo in a Sun­day News­day sto­ry.

With the prover­bial cat now out of the bag (an iron­ic burst of laugh­ter) did you ex­pect its of­fi­cial re­lease?

In light of that leak, I ex­pect­ed that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, elect­ed one month lat­er, would lose no time in tabling the re­port in Par­lia­ment be­cause over the in­ter­ven­ing years, the UNC par­ty, while in op­po­si­tion, had called for its re­lease. How­ev­er, that did not hap­pen.

Sure­ly, Mr Hart, you must have felt dis­ap­point­ed by the fail­ure of both the PNM and the PP gov­ern­ments to ta­ble the doc­u­ment in the leg­is­la­ture?

(A firm nod of the head in the af­fir­ma­tive) Ab­solute­ly, be­cause the in­quiry was un­der­tak­en in the name of the peo­ple and tax­pay­ers paid for it, there­fore, they were en­ti­tled to know the out­come.More­over, if the re­port had been pub­lished, the rec­om­men­da­tions we made would have be­come pub­lic and, if im­ple­ment­ed, pro­cure­ment er­rors that were sub­se­quent­ly re­peat­ed could have been avoid­ed.

I am con­vinced that had some of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Pi­ar­co in­quiry been adopt­ed, the wastage of many mil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic mon­ey through mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion could have been avoid­ed dur­ing the last ten years.

Even the need for hold­ing of the ex­pen­sive Uff in­quiry might have been avoid­ed.

How ex­pen­sive was the Pi­ar­co in­quiry?

The pub­lic nev­er knows the true cost to the coun­try of an in­quiry. For in­stance, we have heard state­ments in Par­lia­ment that the Pi­ar­co in­quiry cost the State $10 mil­lion and the Uff in­quiry $65 mil­lion. How­ev­er, those fig­ures ex­clude the cost of le­gal and oth­er ex­pens­es in­curred by min­istries, state boards and pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the in­quiries, there­fore, the true costs were prob­a­bly twice the sums re­port­ed.

Giv­en the ex­pense, are these pub­lic in­quiries worth it?

In my opin­ion, these in­quires will con­tin­ue to be a waste of time and mon­ey un­til such time as the gov­ern­ment of the day pub­lish­es the re­ports and acts on the rec­om­men­da­tions.

Mr Hart, on this the tenth an­niver­sary of the de­liv­ery of the re­port, do you have any re­grets over the han­dling of the probe and its af­ter­math?

Of course. One of them is that the many pre­dic­tions that no one in Trinidad and To­ba­go would be held ac­count­able for the mis­deeds high­light­ed by the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to the in­quiry are prov­ing to be prophet­ic.The slow ju­di­cial process has en­sured that some 12 years af­ter the first charges were laid against the de­fen­dants in the Pi­ar­co tri­als, no de­ter­mi­na­tions have been made and the re­cent ad­vent of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011, might see all of the ac­cused walk­ing free.

It should be not­ed that, in the in­ter­im, the US res­i­dent al­leged co-con­spir­a­tors in the cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions have been ar­rest­ed on var­i­ous charges, plead­ed guilty, been sen­tenced to im­pris­on­ment, and some have com­plet­ed serv­ing their time and paid their fines while the ac­cused in T&T are still await­ing the courts judg­ment.

Can you iden­ti­fy any di­rect ben­e­fits from the in­quiry?

Thus far, the ma­jor ben­e­fit to our coun­try has been the re­cov­ery of some of the mon­ey stolen from the peo­ple. The facts re­vealed in the in­quiry, com­bined with the speed of the US le­gal sys­tem, have en­abled our gov­ern­ment to re­cov­er from con­vict­ed per­sons and com­pa­nies about $250 mil­lion.

I gath­er, Mr Hart, the in­quiry had some anx­ious mo­ments?

(Cross­ing his legs) An in­quiry is a very dy­nam­ic thing in­volv­ing strong per­son­al­i­ties and you have to be pre­pared for the un­ex­pect­ed.Very ear­ly in the life of the in­quiry, com­mis­sion­ers faced un­due pres­sure from in­flu­en­tial per­sons in the state and pri­vate sec­tors to abort our work be­cause of the fear that ev­i­dence giv­en in pub­lic might prej­u­dice crim­i­nal tri­als al­ready start­ed or like­ly to fol­low.

How­ev­er, chair­man Bernard re­fused to give in to the pres­sures and our in­quiry was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.Then, near­ing its end, com­mis­sion­er Pe­ter By­noe died and the in­quiry came to a halt be­cause our terms of ref­er­ence had not de­fined a quo­rum and we were un­able to con­tin­ue, one man short, with­out a re­vised man­date from the pres­i­dent.

Any oth­er anx­ious sit­u­a­tions?

(Smil­ing) The po­ten­tial­ly most se­ri­ous prob­lem arose when, on the eve of com­plet­ing the re­port, there was dis­agree­ment on some of its con­tents.

The draft re­port was de­bat­ed among the com­mis­sion­ers and I found it im­pos­si­ble to agree to cer­tain con­clu­sions ar­rived at by the chair­man. In late Au­gust 2003, I wrote my fel­low com­mis­sion­ers and ad­vised that I would not sign the re­port as draft­ed and would sub­mit a mi­nor­i­ty re­port. The cat was now among the pi­geons and the com­mis­sion­ers met in emer­gency ses­sions to re­vise the dis­put­ed draft re­port and the new ver­sion was signed by all and our dead­line of Au­gust 30, 2003, was met.

Fi­nal­ly, Mr Hart, what have you learnt from this ex­er­cise?

That gov­ern­ments must not take the peo­ple for grant­ed and when tax­pay­ers' mon­ey is be­ing ex­pend­ed on these ex­er­cis­es they must lev­el with the peo­ple to en­sure that the ills that are meant to be cured are ex­pe­di­tious­ly dealt with.