Dar­ren Ba­haw

A se­cret con­tract mill­house was dis­cov­ered at the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL) in Mar­aval, and armed guards have been called in to se­cure a moun­tain of po­ten­tial­ly damn­ing ev­i­dence which points to the il­le­gal man­u­fac­tur­ing of back­dat­ed ten­der doc­u­ments worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

The dis­cov­ery was made one day af­ter the new board of the state-owned com­pa­ny sus­pend­ed its Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ki­ran Shah and Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer Shar­ma Ma­haraj over claims of im­pro­pri­ety.

In­formed sources told the T&T Guardian that a mem­ber of the board found the "se­cret room" on the first floor of the Mar­aval build­ing, which is op­po­site the Coun­try Club and al­so hous­es the main branch of First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Ltd. EF­CL oc­cu­pies the sec­ond floor of the build­ing and, un­known to staff, an­oth­er room was rent­ed on the first floor.

Sources said a new board mem­ber was stunned af­ter find­ing three peo­ple busy at work in the "se­cret room" and called in se­cu­ri­ty af­ter re­al­is­ing they were work­ing on EF­CL busi­ness. The three peo­ple in the room, and an­oth­er who was sub­se­quent­ly found to be part of the same op­er­a­tion, were sent home and their ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy at the com­pa­ny was sus­pend­ed, sources said.

Ac­count­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers has been called in to con­duct a foren­sic au­dit of the com­pa­ny and has al­ready tak­en a snap­shot of the sys­tems used in the 'mill­house.'

Sources said they have al­ready dis­cov­ered that the four se­lect em­ploy­ees were hired to cre­ate con­tracts and ten­der doc­u­ments for sev­er­al ex­ist­ing projects which were al­ready paid for in full. This was be­ing done, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny in­sid­ers, to val­i­date the ten­der­ing process­es to make them ap­pear trans­par­ent and le­gal.

A pre­lim­i­nary re­port has re­vealed that con­tracts worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were giv­en out to se­lect con­trac­tors in the run-up to the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion and they were paid in full with­out any work be­ing done. Two con­trac­tors, who are fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, have been iden­ti­fied as the ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the scheme, sources said.

Sources said the foren­sic au­dit and a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau, which be­gan in April, trig­gered this week's sus­pen­sion of the two ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers.

A whistle­blow­er ini­tial­ly went to the po­lice with a 108-page dossier de­tail­ing sev­er­al in­stances of fraud and mis­man­age­ment. This sparked a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion cen­ter­ing around the award of sev­er­al con­tracts over the last five years.

Sources said ef­forts had been made to axe the whistle­blow­er but she stood up against her em­ploy­ers.

The T&T Guardian al­so learned that the ex­ecs' sus­pen­sions come mere months af­ter the dis­missal of a fe­male civ­il en­gi­neer who clashed with the se­niors over the con­tract with a pre­ferred EF­CL con­trac­tor.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, re­cent­ly in­stalled EF­CL chair­man Arnold Pig­gott con­firmed the sus­pen­sions and au­dit.

"The foren­sic au­dit has com­menced im­me­di­ate­ly and the two were sus­pend­ed with full pay pend­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," he said.

An in­ter­nal memo, penned by EF­CL cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Ver­i­ty By­noe and dat­ed No­vem­ber 13, in­formed the staff about the sus­pen­sions. That memo al­so in­formed the staff that in­ter­na­tion­al ac­count­ing firm Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers had been re­tained to con­duct the foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion and urged com­pli­ance by all staff mem­bers.

Pig­gott not­ed that the EF­CL's line min­is­ter, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, had called for a foren­sic au­dit in­to the spend­ing and award of con­struc­tion con­tracts by the for­mer board.

He said while he did not know how long the au­dit would take, he was hop­ing it would be com­plet­ed in a time­ly man­ner "so we can move for­ward." He said the fu­ture of the two sus­pend­ed of­fi­cers de­pend­ed on the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"Yes the sus­pen­sions are pend­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," he said.

While Pig­gott did not say whether the foren­sic au­dit and crim­i­nal probe were two sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the T&T Guardian learned that the two would be run­ning par­al­lel and should be com­plet­ed with­in the same time­frame. The foren­sic au­dit and the probe will fo­cus on the EF­CL's use of two pre­ferred con­trac­tors.

The new­ly in­stalled board of di­rec­tors, chaired by the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, met for the sec­ond time on Wednes­day and im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed the two ex­ec­u­tives as the in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­gan.

About the EF­CL

The EF­CL is a spe­cial state en­ter­prise formed to build, de­liv­er and main­tain mod­ern build­ing fa­cil­i­ties util­is­ing best prac­tices in project man­age­ment.

Its man­date is to en­sure the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ern and ef­fi­cient phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and sup­port the strate­gic goals of the min­istry.

The com­pa­ny has been crit­i­cised fre­quent­ly over its in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties for sev­er­al schools which re­main in­com­plete, or fail, leav­ing hun­dreds of chil­dren with­out ac­com­mo­da­tion since the new term opened in Sep­tem­ber.

More in­fo

This is not the first time the EF­CL has faced pub­lic scruti­ny.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer line min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh would on­ly de­tail the line of ap­provals and pay­ment struc­ture be­tween EF­CL and the min­istry, say­ing that every­thing went through the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and that it was all done above board.

Back in 2012, then op­po­si­tion mem­ber, now Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, de­scribed the op­er­a­tions at EF­CL as en­abling a "feed­ing fren­zy." Gopeesingh had said then that an au­dit in­to EF­CL was al­ready in progress and a team from the Fi­nance Min­istry was ex­am­in­ing op­er­a­tions at EF­CL.

Im­bert had raised sus­pi­cions of "ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties" in the award of con­tracts by EF­CL and had called for a foren­sic au­dit in­to sev­er­al scopes of works, in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal up­grades at Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment School and Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege. Im­bert al­so claimed then that for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Clifton De Coteau, used his po­si­tion to help a friend ben­e­fit from EF­CL con­tracts.