Ev­i­dence has emerged which rais­es new ques­tions about the amount of mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment has agreed to pay a con­sor­tium led by an Ital­ian com­pa­ny in a con­tract for four he­li­copters.

Fin­mec­ca­ni­ca, a de­fence and aero­space com­pa­ny, an­nounced on Ju­ly 30 that its whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary, AgustaWest­land, had been award­ed a con­tract with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T worth US$348 mil­lion for the sup­ply of four AW139 he­li­copters. The con­tract, which in­cludes an ex­ten­sive train­ing and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port ser­vice for five years, will al­low the Air Guard to use the he­li­copters for search and res­cue, sur­face sur­veil­lance, law en­force­ment, drug in­ter­dic­tion and dis­as­ter re­lief op­er­a­tions. But an ex­am­i­na­tion of about a dozen AgustaWest­land con­tracts by the Guardian, from the com­pa­ny's own Web site, has re­vealed that while T&T paid US$348 mil­lion for its four-he­li­copter con­tract, oth­er coun­tries and com­pa­nies have paid less, some­times much less, for he­li­copters from the com­pa­ny.

�2 In Ju­ly last year, AgustaWest­land signed a con­tract to sup­ply 18 AW139 medi­um twin he­li­copters, to the Qatar Armed Forces. These are the same as those to be sup­plied to T&T. The Qatar he­li­copters will per­form du­ties sim­i­lar to those to be ac­quired by T&T.

The func­tions of the Qatar he­li­copters in­clude util­i­ty, troop trans­port, search and res­cue, bor­der pa­trol, spe­cial forces op­er­a­tions, law en­force­ment and home­land se­cu­ri­ty du­ties. Ac­cord­ing to the AgustaWest­land Web site, the Qatar con­tract in­cludes crews train­ing and an ini­tial spares pack­age while the T&T con­tract makes pro­vi­sions for "ex­ten­sive train­ing and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port ser­vice for the first five years."

T&T's ne­go­ti­at­ing team agreed to pay US$348 mil­lion for four he­li­copters while the Qatar ne­go­tia­tors paid �260 mil­lion (the con­ver­sion was US$408 mil­lion on the day of the con­tract) for 18 he­li­copters.

�2 In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor, pub­lished as a com­men­tary last Fri­day, Trade Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne re­vealed that the four AW139 he­li­copters to be ac­quired cost US$93.56 mil­lion. That means that each he­li­copter costs US$23.39 mil­lion. On No­vem­ber 12, 2007, AgustaWest­land signed a con­tract with Gulf He­li­copters in Qatar for ten AW139 he­li­copters, al­though those were to have been equipped for off­shore pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion op­er­a­tions. The over­all val­ue of the Qatar con­tract, which in­clud­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a ser­vice sta­tion in the coun­try, was ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$130 mil­lion. That means the unit cost of the Qatar he­li­copters was less than US$13 mil­lion each–or about US$10 mil­lion less than the T&T he­li­copters.

�2 On No­vem­ber 5, 2007, a com­pa­ny called CHC He­li­copter Cor­po­ra­tion, a glob­al off­shore oil and gas con­trac­tor, signed a con­tract with AgustaWest­land to pur­chase 13 AW139 he­li­copters. The con­tract had a val­ue of US$140 mil­lion. That's a per unit cost of US$10.76 mil­lion.

�2 On Oc­to­ber 30, 2008, the Malaysian Mar­itime En­force­ment Agency signed a con­tract with AgustaWest­land to buy three AW139 he­li­copters plus op­tions for sev­er­al ad­di­tion­al air­craft. The Malaysian Mar­itime En­force­ment Agency will use the he­li­copters for search and res­cue, coastal pa­trol and law en­force­ment du­ties, sim­i­lar du­ties to those be­ing ac­quired by the T&T gov­ern­ment. While T&T paid US$348 mil­lion for four air­craft, the Malaysians paid US$200 mil­lion for three, with an op­tion to puchase sev­er­al more.

�2 On Oc­to­ber 7, 2008, the Cana­di­an char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion, Ornge, signed a con­tract for for ten AW139 medi­um twin he­li­copters in aero-med­ical con­fig­u­ra­tion, with an op­tion for two ad­di­tion­al air­craft.

The over­all val­ue of the con­tract was about US$120 mil­lion, which means that each unit costs US$12 mil­lion.