Denyse Renne

Ques­tions still hang over the sale of Ex­ec­u­tive Body­guard Ser­vices Ltd (EB­SL) to a PP fi­nancier for US$14 mil­lion (TT$88 mil­lion).Se­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials were the first to raise con­cerns over the sale of the lu­cra­tive busi­ness owned by Samuel Stafford, to the fi­nancier who is a con­trac­tor based in cen­tral Trinidad. The con­trac­tor con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the PP Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the 2010 elec­tion and al­so spent mil­lions on the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple's (TOP) elec­tion cam­paign.

The ques­tions still to be an­swered are: Why is Stafford's name still list­ed as the own­er of EB­SL de­spite it be­ing sold to the PP con­trac­tor? Why did Stafford sell a very lu­cra­tive busi­ness to the PP fi­nancier at this time?Stafford is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try, sources said, launch­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al brand of se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems with an es­ti­mat­ed an­nu­al worth of over US$75 mil­lion.

Ef­forts to con­tact him were un­suc­cess­ful.Fol­low­ing EB­SL's sale to the PP fi­nancier, sources said it had re­ceived mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts, more so gov­ern­ment con­tracts.Sev­er­al lu­cra­tive con­tracts in­clude the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD), Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC). These con­tracts, sources said, were worth mil­lions.

Sources added that oth­er se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts with­in var­i­ous min­istries are ex­pect­ed to be award­ed to the fi­nancier.Sources said in the past, EB­SL ten­dered for gov­ern­ment con­tracts but had al­ways lost out to Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty, Amal­ga­mat­ed and In­no­v­a­tive Se­cu­ri­ty.The lat­est con­tract to EB­SL was award­ed on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2012 by the Cen­tral Ten­ders Com­mit­tee, for pro­vi­sion of se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The of­fi­cial cost of the con­tract is $8,413,344.00 plus $1,262,001.60 val­ue added tax. The con­tract is for two years.But de­spite this fig­ure be­ing the agreed amount, sources said this could in­crease any­time dur­ing the two-year pe­ri­od due to ad hoc ex­pens­es.Apart from the AG's of­fice, EB­SL will al­so pro­vide ser­vices to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

In 2007, In­no­v­a­tive Se­cu­ri­ty was re­tained to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for the of­fices of the AG and DPP.A three-year con­tract was ini­tial­ly grant­ed.At the end of the three years, the firm's con­tract was re­newed for an ad­di­tion­al two years but was sub­se­quent­ly re­tained on a month-to-month ba­sis.The of­fice of the AG ap­proved the month-to-month con­tract.The ser­vices of In­no­v­a­tive Se­cu­ri­ty were sub­se­quent­ly not re­newed.

Con­cerns over the ac­qui­si­tion

The Point Lisas com­pound which hous­es EB­SL is re­port­ed­ly one of the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed in this coun­try. It was de­signed by the for­mer own­er.Ac­cord­ing to sources, the build­ing can house 300 per­son­nel for train­ing, has an in­door shoot­ing range, an im­pen­e­tra­ble vault, sep­a­rate de­part­ments for over 100 in­ves­ti­ga­tors, a two-way bul­let­proof room for in­ter­ro­ga­tion and in­ter­views, of­fi­cers' mess halls, class­rooms, foren­sic labs and stor­age rooms for over 15 ar­moured ve­hi­cles.

Equip­ment, sources said, was far more ad­vanced than what the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Army pos­sessed.The equip­ment ranges from GPS to one of the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed pri­vate in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing units this coun­try has ever seen.A se­nior of­fi­cial who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied said had it been known the fi­nancier had bought EB­SL then "there may have been ob­jec­tions" to the award­ing of the two-year con­tract.

Ques­tion­ing the rea­son(s) why the com­pa­ny was not in the fi­nancier's name, giv­en the fact that "a lot of mon­ey was spent to se­cure the busi­ness," the of­fi­cial did not want to com­ment. The of­fi­cial al­so did not com­ment on whether se­cu­ri­ty at the of­fice of the DPP has been com­pro­mised.When con­tact­ed last week, AG Anand Ram­lo­gan de­nied knowl­edge that EB­SL was owned by a PP fi­nancier, but was quick to point out that he was sure the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board did not award the con­tract based on par­ty af­fil­i­a­tions.

Calls to the cell phones of EB­SL's di­rec­tor and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dar­rin Carmichael and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Nigel Bis­soon were un­suc­cess­ful. Sev­er­al mes­sages were not re­turned.When Sun­day Guardian even­tu­al­ly spoke with Carmichael and ques­tioned him about the award­ing of con­tracts to EB­SL, the line was dis­con­nect­ed. Fol­low-up calls to Carmichael went unan­swered.The Sun­day Guardian was un­able to reach the PP fi­nancier.

Govt of­fi­cial blanked by US

The Sun­day Guardian al­so un­der­stands that it was on­ly six months ago that a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial trav­elled to the Unit­ed States to at­tend a sem­i­nar where he in­ter­act­ed with US se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel.Sources said the of­fi­cial ex­pressed an in­ter­est in pur­chas­ing sev­er­al high-lev­el sur­veil­lance equip­ment, but was blanked by the US au­thor­i­ties.The US in­di­cat­ed to the of­fi­cial that such equip­ment was bought from one gov­ern­ment to the oth­er and not from gov­ern­ment to in­di­vid­ual.