Yvonne Ba­boolal

The all-for­eign group of in­vestors edged out from the de­vel­op­ment of In­vaders Bay is not go­ing to pack up and leave. This was the firm stand of the group yes­ter­day af­ter news that on­ly two in­vestors were giv­en the nod to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment for ma­jor projects along the cov­et­ed Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front area.

"No. Ab­solute­ly not. We are not go­ing to pack up and leave. We are go­ing to get to the bot­tom of this (why they were re­ject­ed)," a com­pa­ny of­fi­cial told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. The Fal­con Group, ini­tial­ly bent on not in­clud­ing lo­cal con­tent in its project, is now look­ing for suit­able lo­cal part­ners, the source said. The group wants to con­struct a three-tow­er med­ical tourism fa­cil­i­ty at In­vaders Bay, in­clud­ing a can­cer cen­tre and ho­tel.

Fal­con sent an of­fi­cial let­ter to the rel­e­vant min­istry yes­ter­day ask­ing to be told, in writ­ing, ex­act­ly what was go­ing on. The of­fi­cial said oth­er sources in the Gov­ern­ment told the group if they got lo­cal part­ners in­volved there should not be a prob­lem. Fal­con has since con­tact­ed the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion and Re­pub­lic Bank ask­ing for help to iden­ti­fy suit­able lo­cal part­ners, the source said.

Do­minic Hadeed, head of the TTMA, said Fal­con had con­tact­ed him, but not about lo­cal part­ners. "It was about lo­cal con­tent," he said. "They want­ed in­for­ma­tion on how they could work with lo­cal sup­pli­ers, con­trac­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers." Hadeed said the project seemed like a fan­tas­tic one for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion from oil and gas.

At Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment had agreed to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with lo­cal com­pa­nies Daychin Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Ltd (DCDL), owned by Movie Towne's Derek Chin, and In­vaders Bay Ma­ri­na Ltd (IBML), head­ed by Jer­ry Joseph. On Thurs­day Tewarie said his min­istry had re­ceived three pro­pos­als for de­vel­op­ment of parts of In­vaders Bay and rec­om­mend­ed them for Cab­i­net con­sid­er­a­tion.

Cab­i­net then re­ferred the mat­ter to a mul­ti-min­is­te­r­i­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al com­mit­tee, which hired an in­de­pen­dent firm (Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers) to do due-dili­gence tests of the in­vestors' pro­pos­als. But Afra Ray­mond, pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), said the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board has the sole au­thor­i­ty to act on be­half of a min­istry in mat­ters of this kind.

"And it is pre­cise­ly at the pre-con­tract stage that the CTB has its re­mit,"?he point­ed out. "The JCC has held its po­si­tion that the CTB ought to have been in­volved in this mat­ter from the out­set and that the con­tin­u­a­tion of this RFP/de­vel­op­ment process is il­le­gal. "We have writ­ten sev­er­al times to the min­is­ter to seek the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and al­so made ap­pli­ca­tions un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, to no avail, thus far."

Tewarie said it was on the ba­sis of the due-dili­gence test re­sults that rec­om­men­da­tions were made to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with two of the in­vestors. A gov­ern­ment source said Fal­con failed the test. "That means there is noth­ing be­hind them," he said. Fal­con, in a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view, had said it had heard through the grape vine that it was one of the three in­tial­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A group source said the com­pa­ny al­so heard there was stiff op­po­si­tion with­in the Gov­ern­ment to giv­ing a to­tal­ly for­eign com­pa­ny land at In­vaders Bay. Asked if they failed the due-dili­gence test, the spokesman in­sist­ed, "That is not true." The source said the Fal­con Group com­pris­es in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness play­ers, trad­ed on the stock ex­change: the Star­wood Ho­tel Group, own­ers of the Sher­a­ton?chain of ho­tels, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi's Miller School of Med­i­cine, Ital­ian de­vel­op­ers, Bizzi & Parters De­vel­op­ment and the Ar­jo­mand Group, Mid­dle East re­al-es­tate de­vel­op­ers.

He said the group went through PwC in Dubai and all the rel­e­vant coun­tries and re­ceived no re­quests for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on any as­pect of its pro­pos­al. "In April we re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that every­thing was in or­der." The source said about two weeks ago,?Tewarie had called Stephen Del­la Sal­la of Bizzi in New York and Bri­an Woo of Re­pub­lic Bank, the pro­posed fi­nanciers of the Fal­con project, and asked if they felt the project would be suc­cess­ful.

"Since then, the Gov­ern­ment has not re­turned a sin­gle phone call." Asked how they felt about be­ing left out of In­vaders Bay, the source said, "I can't say we were shocked." Chin said he would not say he was sur­prised his com­pa­ny was se­lect­ed. "I got a hint of the process tak­ing place," he said. As for Fal­con, he said, "You can't come to our coun­try and say you are putting up what you are putting up and it has no ben­e­fit for us."

Chin con­tin­ued to in­sist that he was not favoured by the Gov­ern­ment. "Peo­ple are say­ing this is a recipe for cor­rup­tion and Movie Towne was on the in­side track. No­body can say they ever saw Derek Chin hand­ing a min­is­ter a brown pa­per bag.

"I haven't spo­ken to the min­is­ter in six months, aside from last Fri­day in a pub­lic fo­rum. I just sub­mit­ted my pro­pos­al."

Chin said there was noth­ing wrong with the Gov­ern­ment, and not the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board (CTB), se­lect­ing the two com­pa­nies, since "they were not ten­der­ing for any­thing. "No con­tract is be­ing award­ed. I have to in­vest my mon­ey. The Gov­ern­ment on­ly has to fa­cil­i­tate the project."

He said he has al­ready con­tact­ed mas de­sign­er,?Bri­an Mac­Far­lane for help with the Car­ni­val Street and wax mu­se­um in his Streets of the World project for In­vaders Bay. He is al­so invit­ing as many lo­cal in­vestors as he can and some for­eign con­tent too, he said. Streets of the World will in­clude streets rep­re­sent­ing the cul­tures of all lo­cal eth­nic groups, a Sesame Street, and a 1940s repli­ca of Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.

Chin said the project will cost $2 bil­lion when com­plet­ed, but will be done in phas­es. Jer­ry Joseph's project is "along the cruise-ship line", Chin said. "Even­tu­al­ly, we would come to­geth­er for the ma­ri­na idea."