The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to pull out of its planned arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion (CCC) to have the cor­rup­tion-taint­ed Cana­di­an con­glom­er­ate SNC-Lavalin build the $1 bil­lion Pe­nal Hos­pi­tal and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.This fol­lows a meet­ing with chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Jear­lean John, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er G�rard Lat­ulippe and a del­e­ga­tion from the CCC, a crown cor­po­ra­tion of the gov­ern­ment of Cana­da, which sup­ports Cana­di­an trade by help­ing Cana­di­an com­pa­nies max­imise ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly with gov­ern­ment mar­kets.The del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed the CCC's vice pres­i­dent of strat­e­gy and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment Ma­ri­ette Fyfe-Fortin and re­gion­al di­rec­tor Luc Al­lary, who flew in for the meet­ing on Sun­day night.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, of­fi­cials from the Cana­di­an del­e­ga­tion pre­sent­ed the CCC's rec­om­men­da­tions from a due dili­gence re­port, which was com­plet­ed ear­ly this month and for­ward­ed to Ude­cott last week.The meet­ing last­ed for al­most two hours and took place at John's of­fice, South Quay, Port-of-Spain.In an in­ter­view af­ter­wards, John said the del­e­ga­tion sought to prove that SNC-Lavalin had put in place a new struc­ture of gov­er­nance to mit­i­gate against cor­rup­tion."They told us that they had de­vel­oped en­hanced man­age­ment stan­dards, ethics in gov­er­nance as well as im­proved com­pli­ance, gov­er­nance, qual­i­ty, health and safe­ty stan­dards," John added.She said the CCC had en­cour­aged the Gov­ern­ment to en­ter in­to a con­tract with SNC-Lavalin to build the hos­pi­tal on the ba­sis of its im­proved man­age­r­i­al stan­dards.

How­ev­er, John said, a de­ci­sion was tak­en not to en­ter in­to an­oth­er con­tract with SNC-Lavalin and for the CCC to nom­i­nate an­oth­er con­trac­tor.Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who was al­so part of the meet­ing, said sign­ing a con­tract with SNC-Lavalin could harm T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion."Since the sto­ry broke we have been ask­ing for a due dili­gence re­port, which was late in com­ing. This mat­ter was wide­ly dis­cussed and in light of the lat­est in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports of cor­rup­tion, bid-rig­ging and poor eth­i­cal con­duct, we re­quest­ed due dili­gence," Mooni­lal said.

He added: "We re­ceived a del­e­ga­tion from the High Com­mis­sion­er's of­fice in Port-of-Spain and the CCC to­day and they pre­sent­ed some con­clu­sions from a due dili­gence re­port. Af­ter a dis­cus­sion, we in­vit­ed the CCC to nom­i­nate an­oth­er con­trac­tor."

He added that Ude­cott would fol­low up with a let­ter to­day and would await an of­fi­cial re­sponse.Mooni­lal is ex­pect­ed to brief Cab­i­net on the is­sue on Thurs­day.Asked whether there will be any le­gal ram­i­fi­ca­tions from the de­ci­sion not to use SNC-Lavalin on the project, Mooni­lal said no.He said: "There is a rep­u­ta­tion­al risk in­volved in SNC-Lavalin and strong pub­lic-in­ter­est sen­ti­ments about con­duct­ing busi­ness with com­pa­nies that have dif­fi­cul­ty in pass­ing the test of con­fi­dence."We must al­so re­spect the im­por­tance of in­tegri­ty and con­fi­dence, not on­ly of gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, but al­so that of the pub­lic."I feel that there is pub­lic con­cern and lack of con­fi­dence in the con­trac­tor and the po­si­tion of T&T's rep­u­ta­tion. All projects, es­pe­cial­ly gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, must bring con­fi­dence in pub­lic in­ter­est."

He said the first phase of the con­tract was the de­sign and $2.2 mil­lion had been spent on it so far. "We don't think there will be any sig­nif­i­cant cost to the State if we do not pro­ceed be­cause we do not have a con­tract with SNC-Lavalin for the con­struc­tion phase," Mooni­lal added.He said he de­ci­sion to pull out of the arrange­ment would not strain T&T's re­la­tion­ship with Cana­da.On May 1, 2012, Ude­cott signed a frame­work agree­ment with the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment to de­sign the hos­pi­tal at Clarke Road, Pe­nal.The T&T Guardian has been re­port­ing on the shady back­ground of SNC-Lavalin since June.

PNM re­sponds:The Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion took too long, Diego Mar­tin North-East MP Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day.He said: "It was ob­vi­ous months ago that it was a very un­suit­able con­trac­tor. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly bad is, this con­trac­tor is ac­cused of brib­ing politi­cians and pub­lic of­fi­cials in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries."It would have been a ter­ri­ble thing for T&T if we were ex­posed to this kind of be­hav­iour."I don't un­der­stand what is meant by ask­ing the CCC to nom­i­nate an­oth­er con­trac­tor. Is it that we have no say at all in the se­lec­tion process? Do we not have a say in the pro­cure­ment process?" Im­bert said he in­tend­ed to deal with the is­sue when his mo­tion on SNC-Lavalin was brought to Par­lia­ment.Both Im­bert and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley have called on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain how SNC-Lavalin was cho­sen.Im­bert al­so ques­tioned the re­la­tion­ship be­tween SNC-Lavalin and T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da Philip Buxo, who was an ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny be­fore his diplo­mat­ic ap­point­ment. How­ev­er, Buxo has de­nied any in­volve­ment in the arrange­ment.

SNC's trou­bled record

In April this year, the World Bank slapped a ten-year ban on SNC-Lavalin Inc, a sub­sidiary of SNC-Lavalin and its af­fil­i­ates, from bid­ding on projects fund­ed by the bank be­cause of a scan­dal over bribes.A joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion by CBC News and Toron­to's Globe and Mail found a di­vi­sion of SNC-Lavalin had been us­ing a se­cret in­ter­nal ac­count­ing code for bribes on projects across Africa and Asia for years, ac­cord­ing to for­mer em­ploy­ees.The Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion re­port­ed last week that the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Po­lice (RCMP) had charged Kevin Wal­lace, a for­mer se­nior vice-pres­i­dent. Wal­lace is ac­cused of be­ing part of a bribery scheme re­lat­ed to a $2.9 bil­lion de­vel­op­ment project in Bangladesh.

The RCMP is now ex­am­in­ing SNC's Lavalin's in­volve­ment with oth­er for­eign na­tion­als.Last year, po­lice charged two low­er-lev­el SNC-Lavalin em­ploy­ees–Mo­ham­mad Is­mail and Ramesh Shah–with con­spir­ing to pay bribes to help SNC-Lavalin win a su­per­vis­ing con­tract worth Can$50 mil­lion for the Pad­ma bridge mega-project. Both are al­ready await­ing tri­al in Toron­to.The lat­est round of cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions has tar­nished Cana­da's in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, as it is now ranked top on the World Bank's cor­rup­tion list.In a re­port, the World Bank said out of the more than 250 com­pa­nies black­list­ed from bid­ding on its glob­al projects un­der its fraud and cor­rup­tion pol­i­cy, 117 are from Cana­da. SNC-Lavalin and its af­fil­i­ates rep­re­sent 115 of those en­tries.