Gail Alexan­der

Fur­ther ques­tions arose yes­ter­day on the $40 mil­lion NP con­tract is­sue fol­low­ing an ad­ver­tise­ment in which bid­der Gopaul and Com­pa­ny Ltd (GCL) al­lud­ed to a "win­ning bid" and stat­ed NP had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with it on a split con­tract with an­oth­er bid­der. The ad by GCL al­so in­di­cat­ed it had agreed to NP's split con­tract sug­ges­tion while its com­peti­tor ob­ject­ed. A high lev­el Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial said it had been as­cer­tained last week that no con­tract had been award­ed in the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue but NP's board "had tak­en a de­ci­sion on the con­tract." GCL's ad has raised queries since NP, in a re­cent re­lease, stat­ed it had not com­mu­ni­cat­ed with any of the par­ties on the out­come of the is­sue.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan and Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal are on record as say­ing no con­tract has been award­ed. But Mar­tin George, at­tor­ney for CDS, an­oth­er bid­der in the is­sue, said he was send­ing a let­ter to NP on the GCL ad in light of its con­tents. George added: "Gopaul's ad speaks of a 'win­ning bid' and NP had said no bid­der had been con­tact­ed about the out­come of the ten­der process. "Al­so, the in­di­ca­tion from GCL's ad is that that com­pa­ny seems to hint it knows it has won and the Prime Min­is­ter's re­cent state­ment on the is­sue ear­li­er in the week, in say­ing that it ap­pears GCL had won, al­so seems to hint it has won. So these two par­ties seem to know GCL has got­ten through." George added: "Their lan­guage al­so seems to be the same So there ap­pears to be 'con­sen­su­al­i­ty' of the in­for­ma­tion be­tween GCL's state­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter's, in that the lat­ter re­cent­ly spoke of 'win­ning the bid' and GCL has now spo­ken of a 'win­ning bid'.

"It is even more trou­bling since NP's state­ment says no bid­der was con­tact­ed on the out­come. The state­ments in the ad deep­ens the per­ceived links be­tween the al­leged par­ties." George al­so not­ed GCL's ad had al­lud­ed to the fact that GCL was com­mu­ni­cat­ed with by NP in which it was asked to ac­cept a split con­tract with an­oth­er bid­der. George added GCL's ad stat­ed it had agreed to the sit­u­a­tion and "our com­peti­tor had ob­ject­ed." Cit­ing breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, George queried how GCL might have got­ten such in­for­ma­tion and if that was from NP's side. NP pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer An­nal­isa Allen-Be­jamin said yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny stood by its re­lease that no com­mu­ni­ca­tion had been is­sued to any bid­der re­gard­ing the out­come of the ten­der process and that no award had been made. An­oth­er NP of­fi­cial said any com­mu­ni­ca­tion that passed be­tween the com­pa­ny and par­ties might have been "part of the process."

When con­tact­ed about the con­tents of the ad, Ralph Gopaul said he was busy at the mo­ment and to call back. George al­so com­ment­ed on Seep­er­sad-Bachan's de­ci­sion to re­cuse her­self from the on-go­ing probe on the con­tract. Seep­er­sad-Bachan de­cid­ed to do so since her broth­er, Cur­tis, rents Pt Lisas land for his trans­port com­pa­ny from CDS, the oth­er bid­der in the NP con­tract. George said Seep­er­sad-Bachan's sit­u­a­tion was a "ten­u­ous" link and would not af­fect the process. Sub­mis­sion of the re­port from the probe is ex­pect­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice Tues­day.