Ucill Cam­bridge

An in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­ves­tiga­tive agency has in­for­ma­tion that a Gov­ern­ment fi­nancier has amassed over a bil­lion dol­lars in con­tracts over the three years that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has been in pow­er.This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by foren­sic and fraud au­dit­ing spe­cial­ist Stephon Grey.

Grey is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at BDO Foren­sic Ac­count­ing, the world's fifth largest net­work of au­dit­ing firms; a sub-con­trac­tor at Kroll UK Ltd, the world's lead­ing foren­sic and in­ves­tiga­tive group; and the di­rec­tor of ed­u­ca­tion at the Caribbean In­sti­tute of Foren­sic Ac­count­ing. He is con­sid­ered to be one of the lead­ing foren­sic ac­count­ing con­sul­tants in the re­gion.

Grey was at the time speak­ing at a fo­rum ti­tled A Prop­er Pro­cure­ment Frame­work as a Tool for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, put on by Anoint­ed Pro­fes­sion­als Ex­hibit­ing Ex­cel­lence (Apex) at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.He spoke on the top­ic Con­duct­ing Ef­fec­tive Pro­cure­ment In­ves­ti­ga­tions and said that any pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion be­ing con­sid­ered must treat first with the is­sue of po­lit­i­cal par­ty fi­nanc­ing.

Ad­dress­ing the need to con­duct due dili­gence and back­ground checks when con­sid­er­ing the award­ing of con­tracts, Grey said this was a process well fol­lowed in de­vel­oped coun­tries, but "we don't do it in Trinidad."

He said that this lack of due dili­gence had re­sult­ed in the largest con­tract award­ed in the coun­try over the last two years in a methanol deal, go­ing to a non-ex­is­tent com­pa­ny trad­ing un­der the name Trinidad De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, and it was on­ly when it was point­ed out af­ter the fact that such com­pa­ny was not reg­is­tered in this coun­try that the fact be­came known.

"Who is be­hind the com­pa­ny and whether or not the con­tracts have gone to po­lit­i­cal par­ty fi­nanciers is some­thing that in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies pay at­ten­tion to," he said.Grey said he is amazed at the kind of in­for­ma­tion that for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies have about this coun­try and oth­er places in the Caribbean, in­for­ma­tion that was gath­ered through in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He said while politi­cians may tell the pub­lic that the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex is just per­cep­tion, it is not so. He said "per­cep­tion is just 20 per cent" and the "oth­er 80 per cent is ac­tu­al­ly pred­i­ca­tion and pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions that are con­duct­ed."

"Many of our pub­lic of­fi­cials who feel they are quite smart look up on the in­ter­net and see these havens and they want to send their mon­ey to Licht­en­stein and to An­tigua," he said, adding there is re­al­ly no way to hide those trans­ac­tions since "all wire trans­fer in­ter­me­di­ary banks are Amer­i­can banks.""So these of­fi­cials are not that smart. The Amer­i­can agen­cies have every sin­gle wire trans­fer, from who and where and what­so­ev­er," he said.

He said the for­eign en­ti­ties cur­rent­ly have a lot of in­for­ma­tion on con­tracts and monies giv­en to one PP fi­nancier."One agency told us just last week that one cer­tain po­lit­i­cal par­ty fi­nancier has al­ready re­ceived, in the three years from the cur­rent ad­min­stra­tion, over one bil­lion in con­tracts."He re­fused, how­ev­er, to di­vulge the name of fi­nancier or the com­pa­ny or com­pa­nies which had ben­e­fit­ted from the con­tracts.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the Grey's claim, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said, "I would be very scep­ti­cal to be­live such in­for­ma­tion un­less there is ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate such a claim."

When told the source of the in­for­ma­tion, Ram­lo­gan said if the source were a gov­ern­ment agency the in­for­ma­tion would be deemed more cred­i­ble, since "they may pos­sess the le­gal au­thor­i­ty and pow­er and con­se­quen­tial­ly the cred­i­bil­i­ty to make such a state­ment. It is far too easy to make ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions with­out any proof," he said

To sub­stan­ti­ate his claim, he said he re­called a Sun­day Guardian sto­ry ear­li­er this year which claimed a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (FIU) for pay­ing off a mort­gage at the rate of $42,000 a day in cash at a lo­cal bank. He said both the bank and FIU sub­se­quent­ly de­nied the al­le­ga­tion, but did not pre­vent the sto­ry from mak­ing front page"We have to be very care­ful," he said, sug­gest­ing an agen­da may be at play.

"Pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions with po­lit­i­cal agen­das are a fea­ture of our pol­i­tics and this is the sil­ly sea­son," Ram­lo­gan said."It is sus­pi­cious that any­one who claims to have such in­for­ma­tion will not re­port it or share it with the prop­er and rel­e­vant law en­force­ment agency."If the ev­i­dence ex­ists it should be shared with the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (FIU) and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP). If it is shared with me I will have no dif­fi­cul­ty in treat­ing with it or pass­ing it."

Al­so in his pre­sen­ta­tion, Grey, speak­ing about "ex­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions," said law en­force­ment of­fi­cials must have re­la­tion­ships with ex­ter­nal bod­ies who have in­for­ma­tion to share. He said nine times out of ten, per­sons amass­ing mil­lions in con­tracts and bribes do not bank their mon­ey in Trinidad and To­ba­go.For­eign agen­cies, he said, can tell lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies "what are the wire trans­fers go­ing out and who are the po­lit­i­cal or pub­lic of­fi­cials who have ac­counts in off­shore havens."

"The Unit­ed States can tell your Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, one phone call, and give him a list of all pub­lic of­fi­cials and where they bank. But it all comes back to the po­lit­i­cal will. If the po­lit­i­cal fi­nanciers are con­trol­ling the pub­lic of­fi­cials, then they don't want to make that phone call," he said.

Asked whether or not the in­for­ma­tion about the con­tracts and mon­ey trans­ac­tions re­vealed by the for­eign agency would be known by ei­ther the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­tiga­tive Bu­reau or the FIU, he said all it would take to find out is the "po­lit­i­cal will" and a phone call to the rel­e­vant for­eign agency.