Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Un­der the noses of se­cu­ri­ty guards, hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars worth in fit­tings and fix­tures at the con­tro­ver­sial Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba have been cart­ed away by ban­dits.

Among the items stolen were gal­lons of paint, air con­di­tion units, rolls of elec­tri­cal wires, am­pli­fiers, lengths of cop­per pipe lines and light­ing fix­tures.

The thieves op­er­at­ed at night by gain­ing en­try at the back of the pitch-black acad­e­my, which is sur­round­ed by tall trees and tow­er­ing grass.

The Sun­day Guardian team learnt of the theft from anony­mous sources, af­ter the team was al­lowed to en­ter the sta­di­um by lax se­cu­ri­ty guards of Paragon Pro­tec­tion Con­sul­tants Ltd with­out be­ing ques­tioned or asked to show any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

But Yash­mid El­lis Kara­math, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Hafeez Kara­math Ltd (HKL), the main con­trac­tor of the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty, is re­fus­ing to ac­cept blame for the wan­ton theft.

"I am not re­spon­si­ble for the stolen items," Kara­math in­sist­ed yes­ter­day.

In 2005, HKL was award­ed the con­tract for the sta­di­um by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), which was sched­uled to be com­plet­ed by 2007 in time for the ICC Crick­et World Cup at an ini­tial cost es­ti­mate of $275 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, the cost of the sta­di­um bal­looned to $885 mil­lion with sev­er­al de­lays, which re­sult­ed in the project be­ing halt­ed in 2010 by Ude­cott.

Up to that time, Kara­math said, he had two se­cu­ri­ty firms–Thor Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd and a ca­nine unit called Man Stop­pers that se­cured the sites and its ma­te­ri­als.

Kara­math: I am not re­spon­si­ble

But when he was asked to va­cate the premis­es, "I told them (Ude­cott) if I do that I would no longer be re­spon­si­ble for any­thing," Kara­math said.

Kara­math said it was dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy the loss­es in­curred.

"I have no idea what was stolen," Kara­math said, re­fus­ing to elab­o­rate fur­ther on the is­sue.

The fix­tures and fit­tings, pur­chased by HKL, were placed in sev­er­al rooms in­side the fa­cil­i­ty, which were tar­get­ed by thieves.

The locks on many of the steel-plat­ed doors where the items were stored were cut open.

Two room­fuls of elec­tri­cal wires were pil­fered of cop­per strands, while lengths of wires at­tached to sev­er­al elec­tri­cal pan­el box­es were snipped and re­moved.

Yes­ter­day, chair­man of Ude­cott Noel Gar­cia con­firmed the theft had oc­curred from 2010 to 2015, but he could not put a val­ue on the fix­tures and fit­tings.

"I don't know. I know the cop­per wire would be pret­ty ex­pen­sive. Van­dal­ism of cop­per wire is through­out...they van­dalised a lot of TSTT and T&TEC's lines. It's al­most like some kind of or­gan­ised ring," Gar­cia said.

He said due to poor se­cu­ri­ty at the crick­et acad­e­my "peo­ple say it was a free for all. I have put a stop to all the Car­ni­val fetes that were held in the car park and the drag rac­ing. Once you have peo­ple on the sta­di­um any­thing could hap­pen. You would open the flood gates."

Gar­cia: It was just crazi­ness

When Gar­cia toured the sta­di­um with bat­ting star Bri­an Lara last No­vem­ber, he said he heard "there was a fair amount of van­dal­ism...that peo­ple had stolen fix­tures and elec­tri­cal wires and so forth.

"Yes, you are right, peo­ple did in fact van­dalise and steal fix­tures from the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. It was just crazi­ness. They stole the wires and air con­di­tion equip­ment.

"When peo­ple say that we should leave the sta­di­um and not fix it they have to be crazy be­cause what would even­tu­al­ly hap­pen, peo­ple...would steal out every­thing."

Un­der the new board at Ude­cott, Gar­cia said, se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were put in place "to en­sure that there is no re­oc­cur­rence of what hap­pened in the past with the steal­ing. Since No­vem­ber we have not had one in­ci­dent of theft."

Among the mea­sures were the beef­ing up of se­cu­ri­ty guards, an in­crease in mo­bile pa­trols and il­lu­mi­nat­ing a por­tion of the sta­di­um.

He said for years the sta­di­um re­mained in dark­ness.

Next month, Gar­cia said, re­fur­bish­ment work on the sta­di­um would re­sume, which was ex­pect­ed to cost tax­pay­ers $90 mil­lion.

"The work will go on."

Gar­cia said for the Sun­day Guardian to gain en­try in­to the sta­di­um with­out pro­duc­ing an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion showed that "se­cu­ri­ty was lax. I would take steps to in­ves­ti­gate this."

Asked if the con­trac­tor or Ude­cott would be held ac­count­able for the stolen items, Gar­cia said: "To be frank, I re­al­ly don't know that."

Gar­cia said Ude­cott and HKL were now locked in a le­gal bat­tle over the project and so he pre­ferred not to com­ment fur­ther.

A se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who iden­ti­fied her­self as Geo­ha­jan at Paragon Pro­tec­tion Con­sul­tants Ltd said the own­er of the es­tab­lish­ment "Mr Rezendie" was not in of­fice and she would pass on our con­cerns to him.

How­ev­er, up to press time Rezendie had not re­turned our call.

MORE IN­FO

'Project scan­dalous,

out of con­trol'

In 2009, the struc­tur­al steel­work on the sta­di­um was con­demned ac­cord­ing to a re­port in­to the Ude­cott project pre­pared by Ger­ry Mc­Caf­frey, the con­struc­tion ex­pert hired by the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.

Mc­Caf­frey's ini­tial re­port in­to the project re­vealed that HKL ig­nored 300 "stop or­ders" for work on the project.

Chair­man of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to Ude­cott, Pro­fes­sor John Uff, QC, de­scribed the Bri­an Lara project as "noth­ing short of scan­dalous" and "out of con­trol."