Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day fired for­mer Plan­ning Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mary King, re­gard­ing "im­prop­er ac­tion" in a con­tract award­ed from the Plan­ning Min­istry to a King fam­i­ly firm named Ix­anos Ltd. Fol­low­ing is the state­ment of the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ju­liana Boodram-John to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on the is­sue.

Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Anand Ram­lo­gan

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al

Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al,

Ca­bil­do Cham­bers,

St Vin­cent Street,

Port-of-Spain.

Dear Sir,

State­ment, re the de­sign, host­ing and es­tab­lish­ment of a Web­site for the Min­istry of Plan­ning Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs:

I as­sumed du­ty as the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Plan­ning Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs on June 24, 2010. One of the first ex­er­cis­es that was un­der­tak­en was to give the new min­istry a brand and an iden­ti­ty. The min­istry shared the Web site with the for­mer min­istry, now Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment. The es­tab­lish­ment of a web­site for the min­istry was there­fore a pri­or­i­ty. The min­istry in­vit­ed ten­ders for the es­tab­lish­ment of the web­site in Sep­tem­ber 2010.

Be­fore the open­ing of the bids, the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed to me that she want­ed to be the chair of the Ten­ders Com­mit­tee to eval­u­ate the bids. I told her that this is not the pro­to­col that is nor­mal­ly fol­lowed and that 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.I con­sult­ed with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Al­li­son Lewis to find out 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. I then as­sured the min­is­ter that the process would be fair and that se­nior per­son­nel would be put on the eval­u­a­tion team. The min­is­ter agreed that she would not be the chair. The team com­prised the deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Joseph Howard, the se­nior le­gal of­fi­cer, An­drea Julien, the IT man­ag­er, De­osaran Bis­nath and Ephraim Ser­rette who is on con­tract but who is an au­di­tor by train­ing and worked in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al De­part­ment for a num­ber of years.

I felt this team of high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cers pos­sessed the nec­es­sary skills and com­pe­ten­cy, as well as au­thor­i­ty to han­dle this ex­er­cise. The min­is­ter agreed to this team but in­sist­ed that I al­so in­clude as part of the team her per­son­al as­sis­tant who is an en­gi­neer by train­ing. I cau­tioned the min­is­ter about in­clud­ing her per­son­al staff but she said that she was ad­vised by the Cab­i­net that all ten­der­ing should have her rep­re­sen­ta­tive present. The open­ing of the ten­der box was sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 1 2010 and the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that since this was the first open­ing of a ten­der for the min­istry she want­ed to be present. I told her it was not nec­es­sary for her to be present but she said she would like to be there to en­sure that every­thing was in or­der. I did not think any­thing strange of this.

On the day of the open­ing, I asked mem­bers of staff to be present to wit­ness the open­ing. I had a mem­ber of staff open the en­velopes and an­oth­er record all the bids.The first bid had no VAT reg­is­tra­tion or BIR reg­is­tra­tion and I in­di­cat­ed to the min­is­ter that it should be dis­qual­i­fied but she said that this was "small mon­ey" and there­fore we should not dis­qual­i­fy any­one. Not want­i­ng to ap­pear to have a dis­agree­ment with the min­is­ter in pub­lic, I agreed. All bids were record­ed and the doc­u­ments passed to the chair of the eval­u­a­tion team, Joseph Howard. The min­is­ter did not in­di­cate to me that she had any in­ter­est in any of the com­pa­nies bid­ding. The min­is­ter held reg­u­lar meet­ings with the eval­u­a­tion team to find out their progress. I did not think it strange be­cause she was in the habit of want­i­ng to know every­thing tak­ing place in the min­istry. She was al­ways more in­ter­est­ed in the op­er­a­tional de­tails of the min­istry rather than the strate­gic di­rec­tion. At one meet­ing, I re­call the min­is­ter wish­ing to know which were the short- list­ed com­pa­nies.

At an­oth­er meet­ing she dis­cussed the cri­te­ria to be used for fi­nal se­lec­tion. It should be not­ed that the IT man­ag­er, De­osaran Bis­nath took the lead in the se­lec­tion process and re­quest­ed mem­bers of the eval­u­a­tion team to sub­mit their score­sheets to him by noon on Fri­day Oc­to­ber 8. Bis­nath col­lat­ed all the scores, in­clud­ing his own. At the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the eval­u­a­tion, the IT man­ag­er in­formed me that the process was com­plet­ed and that a con­tract need­ed to be drawn up. I re­quest­ed the se­nior le­gal of­fi­cer to draft a con­tract. The con­tract was signed on No­vem­ber 3, 2010 by the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Joseph Howard. I was out of the coun­try on of­fi­cial busi­ness. Some time in Jan­u­ary 2011, a cler­i­cal of­fi­cer of the ac­counts de­part­ment came to me and en­quired of me whether I was aware that the con­tract that was award­ed for the Web site was for the min­is­ter's hus­band and son's com­pa­ny.

I was shocked and en­quired what proof there was of this, to which he replied that the min­is­ter's hus­band had sub­mit­ted a doc­u­ment to ver­i­fy the tele­phone num­ber was reg­is­tered in his name and that to which, she was au­tho­rised to claim the tele­phone bill. He had al­so writ­ten to re­quest Keron Gopaul, an em­ploy­ee of the com­pa­ny, IX­anos, to sign on be­half of the com­pa­ny. Of­fi­cers of the Ac­counts De­part­ment had seen the sig­na­ture and recog­nised it as the same. I re­quest­ed the file and called the deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Mr Howard and the se­nior le­gal of­fi­cer, Ms Julien, to en­quire if they knew of this. Howard in­di­cat­ed he knew but af­ter the sign­ing, and Julien in­di­cat­ed she did not know at that point.

I called Bis­nath sep­a­rate­ly and he in­di­cat­ed that he knew all along but did not see any­thing wrong with the process.

I spoke to Julien as to what we should do about it. We dis­cov­ered that a down­pay­ment of fifty per cent was al­ready made and that the web­site was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed in three months. I de­cid­ed to not to ap­proach the min­is­ter since half of the con­tract sum was al­ready paid and al­so be­cause it was a short con­tract. I did not ap­proach the min­is­ter or tell her what I dis­cov­ered be­cause I felt it would have caused strained re­la­tions with both of us. In ad­di­tion, cog­nisant of the min­is­ter's role in Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, I felt that she was aware of con­flict of in­ter­est and there­fore I be­lieved that the best course of ac­tion was to have the con­tract com­plet­ed as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and avoid any fur­ther busi­ness with this com­pa­ny. Sub­se­quent­ly, Ser­rette, on two oc­ca­sions, print­ed e-mails he re­ceived from Stephen King seek­ing to so­lic­it new work from the min­istry.

I ad­vised that Mr King should be told that the min­istry would be invit­ing ten­ders for all fu­ture works. We had in­tend­ed to up­date the Web sites of three oth­er di­vi­sions of the min­istry, i.e. the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­tics Di­vi­sion and the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Unit. The for­mer two di­vi­sions were larg­er than the core min­istry. When the con­tract with IX­anos was com­plet­ed I re­quest­ed Bis­nath to do a check­list for me to ver­i­fy that all that was sup­posed to be done was ac­tu­al­ly done.He as­sured me this was so but in­di­cat­ed that 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.I re­ceived an e-mail from Stephen King in­di­cat­ing he want­ed to come in to "chat" about it as it ap­peared that I did not un­der­stand what it was about. I did not en­ter­tain this re­quest.

As part of the con­tract, the com­pa­ny was sup­posed to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing, some of which has tak­en place. Stephen King launched the train­ing and the staff got to know him, through these train­ing ses­sions. At this point in time every­one in the IT De­part­ment, as well as ac­counts and some of the pro­fes­sion­al staff who took part in the train­ing, be­came aware of the re­la­tion of Stephen King with the min­is­ter and the own­er­ship of the com­pa­ny, IX­anos. On Fri­day May 6, I had to at­tend the fu­ner­al of my un­cle at the Mos­qui­to Creek and did not go to work. I got a call from the of­fice that Bis­nath had told staff that on the week­end, the Ex­press News­pa­pers would pub­lish some­thing on this mat­ter. I prompt­ly called Bis­nath to find out what he knew. He told me he had friends in the me­dia who told him that this sto­ry would be com­ing out this week­end.

Dur­ing the day the staff in­formed me that the re­porter, Ms Ma­haraj, was call­ing for me, Ms Julien and Mr. Ser­rette. No one at the of­fice gave my mo­bile num­ber to the re­porter. Mr Howard called me about 5 pm to in­form me that the re­porter had spo­ken to him and had asked him how to spell my name. I have nev­er spo­ken to any re­porter on this mat­ter, nor have I leaked any in­for­ma­tion to any­one, in­clud­ing the me­dia. To this day I have not even spo­ken or com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the min­is­ter on this mat­ter. Sup­port­ing doc­u­ments from Bis­nath to the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee and e-mails from Stephen King to Ser­rette and my­self are at­tached.

Ju­liana Jo­han-Boodram,

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag),

Min­istry of Plan­ning Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs,

May 10, 2011