Gail Alexan­der

For­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Mary King had " in­sist­ed "on chair­ing the ten­der com­mit­tee re­gard­ing a con­tract, which her fam­i­ly's firm even­tu­al­ly re­ceived, and had asked to be present at the open­ing of the ten­der's box, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry's act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ju­liana Jo­han-Boodram. Jo­han-Boodram al­so claimed ef­forts were made to ex­tend the scope of the con­tract award­ed to King's fam­i­ly firm. The min­istry had re­ceived e-mails from King's son, Stephen, the com­pa­ny's busi­ness man­ag­er, seek­ing to "so­lic­it" new work from the min­istry, Jo­han-Boodram fur­ther claimed. Her al­le­ga­tions were made in a state­ment to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan as part of the ev­i­dence on the King is­sue.

That con­cerned the award of a con­tract for the de­vel­op­ment of a web­site at King's for­mer min­istry to IX­anos Ltd, a fam­i­ly busi­ness King joint­ly owned with her hus­band, Pro­fes­sor Dr St Clair King. Her son, Stephen, is busi­ness man­ag­er. King was fired as min­is­ter on Tues­day by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of "im­prop­er ac­tion." She is al­leged to have failed to dis­close in­ter­est in IX­anos Ltd, to have "par­tic­i­pat­ed" in the se­lec­tion process and placed her sec­re­tary on the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee which rec­om­mend­ed the award to IX­anos Ltd. In her state­ment Jo­han-Boodram said: "Be­fore open­ing of the bids, the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed she want­ed to be the chair of the Ten­der's Com­mit­tee to eval­u­ate the bids. The state­ment added: "I told her this is not the pro­to­col that is nor­mal­ly fol­lowed and min­is­ters are not sup­posed to be in­volved in this ac­tiv­i­ty.

"The min­is­ter be­came very an­gry with me and de­mand­ed to know why this could not be done and in­sist­ed that I show her the reg­u­la­tions that would de­bar her from be­ing the chair." Jo­han-Boodram said she con­sult­ed with the Fi­nance Min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Al­li­son Lewis to as­cer­tain if there were any reg­u­la­tions to pre­vent the min­is­ter from per­form­ing this role. "How­ev­er, we both con­curred that in or­der to pro­tect the min­is­ter's in­tegri­ty, I would try to dis­cour­age her from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any ten­der­ing process," she added. Jo­han-Boodram said she as­sured King the process would be fair and that se­nior per­son­nel would be put on the eval­u­a­tion team. She said King then agreed she would not be chair, but in­sist­ed the team in­clud­ed her per­son­al as­sis­tant. Jo­han-Boodram said she cau­tioned the min­is­ter about in­clud­ing her per­son­al staff.

"But she said she was ad­vised by the Cab­i­net all ten­der­ing should have her rep­re­sen­ta­tive present," she added. Jo­han-Boodram said King did not in­di­cate she had any in­ter­est in any of the bid­ding com­pa­nies.

She said "some­time in Jan­u­ary 2011," a cler­i­cal of­fi­cer asked whether she was aware the con­tract that was award­ed for the web­site was for the min­is­ter's hus­band and son's com­pa­ny. Jo­han-Boodram said: " I was shocked." She said sev­er­al of the eval­u­a­tion team mem­bers re­gard­ing con­tract said they did not know. But Jo­han-Boodram said De­osaran Bis­nath, the min­istry's IT man­ag­er, who was on the eval­u­a­tion team, in­di­cat­ed "he knew all along but did not see any­thing wrong with the process." (Ef­forts to reach Bis­nath yes­ter­day proved fu­tile.) Jo­han-Boodram said she did not ap­proach King on the is­sue be­cause she feared "strained re­la­tions" be­tween them.

She added: "In ad­di­tion, cog­nisant of the min­is­ter's role in Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, I felt she was aware of con­flict of in­ter­est and, there­fore, I be­lieved the best course of ac­tion was to have the con­tract com­plet­ed as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and avoid any fur­ther busi­ness with this com­pa­ny." When the con­tract was com­plet­ed Jo­han-Boodram said Bis­nath ver­i­fied all that had to be done was done. "But he in­di­cat­ed we should get in­to a ser­vice lev­el agree­ment with IX­anos to main­tain the site. He sub­mit­ted a copy of the agree­ment from IX­anos. I in­di­cat­ed I was not pre­pared to con­sid­er this,"she added. Yes­ter­day At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said when doc­u­ments on the mat­ter were sent to him and the Prime Min­is­ter by King last Oc­to­ber, every­thing ap­peared above board. He added: "What was rep­re­sent­ed in the doc­u­ments left a clear im­pres­sion that King had suf­fi­cient­ly re­cused her­self from the process. "We were not in­formed she had put one of her as­sis­tants on the team and that she took a less than hands-off ap­proach."

PM: She had to go to pro­tect Govt

For­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Mary King had to be fired in or­der for Gov­ern­ment's in­tegri­ty to be pro­tect­ed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day. She spoke briefly about the sit­u­a­tion as she wel­comed new Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie to Gov­ern­ment. She did not share King's view on the is­sue of the King fam­i­ly's IX­anos' con­tract award should have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed first by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "For us to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of my Gov­ern­ment we had to do what I had to... there­after what has emerged, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has made rec­om­men­da­tions to go to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. "De­ci­sions to be made by the com­mis­sion are to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from those to be made by the Prime Min­is­ter."

Asked if the mat­ter would have been dealt with if the re­port on the is­sue had not been done, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said she "did not want to spec­u­late."