Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Aztec As­phalt Pavers, owned by UNC fi­nancier Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh, won a $14 mil­lion con­tract in Jan­u­ary last year to build the Brick­field Pack­ing House, de­spite hav­ing no pri­or work ex­pe­ri­ence with the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co).This was con­firmed in a doc­u­ment signed by chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Namde­v­co, Ganesh Gan­gaper­sad.

In an in­ter­view, Gan­gaper­sad said Gal­barans­ingh's com­pa­ny won the con­tract to build the Brick­field Pack­ing House in Tabaquite be­cause it had the low­est bid.Doc­u­ments ob­tained by the T&T Guardian re­vealed that Namde­v­co was man­dat­ed to es­tab­lish five pack­ing hous­es with an ini­tial al­lo­ca­tion of $10 mil­lion from the 2009-2010 bud­get.

An ad­di­tion­al $52 mil­lion was ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 2013 for the projects to be con­struct­ed at Rio Claro/Tabaquite, San­gre Grande, Ch­agua­nas/Cou­va, Table­land/Bar­rack­pore and a tem­po­rary fa­cil­i­ty at the port of Port-of-Spain.In a note to the Ten­ders Com­mit­tee, it was stat­ed that ten­ders were in­vit­ed from eight se­lect­ed con­trac­tors but on­ly sev­en con­trac­tors ten­dered for the job. These in­clud­ed:

�2Aztec As­phalt Pavers Ltd: $14,026,097.19.

�2 Sais­con Ltd: $14,833,405.53.

�2 Park Square De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd: $15,199,940.

�2 Amal­ga­mat­ed En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vice Ltd: $15,797,758.15.

�2 Adam's Project Man­age­ment & Con­struc­tion Ltd: $15,940,227.38.

�2CPML Con­trac­tors Ltd: $17,421,461.55.

�2 AB­BA Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Ltd: $17,719,996.95.

Af­ter an eval­u­a­tion of the ten­ders it was rec­om­mend­ed that the con­tract be award­ed to Aztec As­phalt Pavers Lim­it­ed as the ten­der price was 11.85 per cent low­er than the en­gi­neers es­ti­mate.Gan­gaper­sad said ten­ders were opened on Jan­u­ary 15, 2014. Eval­u­a­tion of the ten­ders were done by Col­in Man­war­ing, a con­sul­tant at One Ten Ar­chi­tect and Plan­ners Lim­it­ed, S. Smith, man­ag­er of in­fra­struc­ture and sys­tems and Nara­da Latch­man, di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions.

Gal­barans­ingh and busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son have been at the cen­tre of a scan­dal in which they were ac­cused of al­leged­ly pay­ing $8 mil­lion in bribes to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.The al­le­ga­tions were made by ILP leader Jack Warn­er. Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son are want­ed in the Unit­ed States on a se­ries of charges aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port project.

Gal­barans­ingh faces 13 charges, among them wire fraud, con­spir­a­cy to laun­der mon­ey and en­gag­ing in un­law­ful trans­ac­tions while Fer­gu­son faces a to­tal of 82 charges, which in­clude wire fraud and con­spir­a­cy to laun­der mon­ey.The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred in the US, T&T, The Ba­hamas and else­where be­tween Sep­tem­ber 1,1996 and De­cem­ber 31, 2005.

How­ev­er in 2011, Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, pre­sid­ing in the Port of Spain High Court, ruled that the men should not be ex­tra­dit­ed to the US say­ing to do so would be "un­just, op­pres­sive and un­law­ful."