Shal­iza Has­sanali

A le­gal and fi­nan­cial au­dit in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) has un­earthed mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars be­ing spent on con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers, some of whom were nev­er award­ed con­tracts. In ad­di­tion to pay­ments go­ing to con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers with­out any sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, the probe al­so re­vealed there was wide­spread favour­ing of cer­tain con­trac­tors, with al­le­ga­tions of kick­backs be­ing of­fered to UTT staff. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the ex­perts not­ed the procur­ing of awards of con­tracts to sup­pli­ers/con­trac­tors in which UTT's man­age­ment or staff had an in­ter­est, or in which their rel­a­tives had an in­ter­est.

Al­so one of ten Bosendor­fer pi­anos pur­chased by the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) to­talling US$850,677 (TT$5m) de­liv­ered to the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence with­out the uni­ver­si­ty's knowl­edge is al­so be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. The pi­ano, which was de­liv­ered to the PM's res­i­dence, oc­cu­pied at the time by for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, was just one of sev­er­al im­pro­pri­eties in fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions and pro­cure­ment un­earthed by le­gal and fi­nan­cial ex­perts, fol­low­ing a probe in­to the af­fairs of UTT six months ago. Checks on the In­ter­net showed that prices of Bosendor­fer pi­anos ranged from US$45,000 to US$179,500. The im­pro­pri­eties al­leged­ly re­vealed that mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars were spent with no prop­er sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy pay­ments.

Among some of the im­pro­pri­eties the in­ves­tiga­tive team un­cov­ered were:

�2 Pay­ments to sup­pli­ers/con­trac­tors with­out sup­port­ing con­tracts and in­ad­e­quate doc­u­men­ta­tion.

�2 Al­so, mak­ing pay­ments in re­spect of cost over­runs and claims by con­trac­tors with­out prop­er doc­u­men­tary sup­port were un­earthed.

�2 The team al­so found out that signed and au­tho­rised pay­ments were made to con­sul­tants and mu­si­cians based abroad, with no re­quire­ment for them to com­plete time sheets, and no oth­er avail­able ev­i­dence of the work per­formed.

Queries were al­so raised about a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als be­ing paid as em­ploy­ees at UTT de­spite ei­ther not per­form­ing any work, or al­so be­ing paid by an­oth­er com­pa­ny or of hav­ing left UTT. The au­dit, or­dered by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and man­dat­ed by Cab­i­net, has since led to the sus­pen­sion of UTT's vice pres­i­dent fi­nance, ad­min­is­tra­tion and pro­cure­ment Lennard Prescod and Dave Bha­jan, vice pres­i­dent of cap­i­tal projects and in­sti­tu­tion­al plan­ning on De­cem­ber 7. Both were sus­pend­ed from du­ty on full pay with all al­lowances un­til Jan­u­ary 31, 2011, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The sus­pen­sion let­ters were writ­ten by chair­man of the UTT board Prof Ken­neth Ram­c­hand. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a UTT source ex­plained, has iden­ti­fied se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions about the man­ner in which cer­tain of­fi­cials con­duct­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. These al­le­ga­tions, if proven, would amount to gross neg­li­gence, in­com­pe­tence, mis­con­duct and dere­lic­tion of du­ty on Bha­jan and Prescod's part, the UTT source ex­plained. Up­on com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion Prescod and Bha­jan would be ap­prised of all al­le­ga­tions against them and giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond and clar­i­fy any con­cerns.

UTT board promis­es to act fair­ly

The source not­ed that the UTT board is cog­nisant of its du­ty to act fair­ly to­wards Bha­jan and Prescod in a man­ner re­flec­tive of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice. Based on the se­ri­ous­ness of the al­le­ga­tions made against Bha­jan and Prescod, the board not­ed that the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions should con­tin­ue in an unim­ped­ed, ob­jec­tive and ex­pe­di­tious man­ner, not­ing that this was of para­mount im­por­tance to UTT.

AG: Probe ex­pect­ed to con­clude by March, 2011

Ram­lo­gan, who re­ceived a copy of the probe last week, re­fused to com­ment about the sus­pen­sion, stat­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing. "I would not wish to prej­u­dice those in­ves­ti­ga­tions at this stage," was his re­sponse when con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Guardian. Ram­lo­gan said he ex­pect­ed the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­clud­ed by the end of March, 2011. Asked if he ex­pects more sus­pen­sions to come out of the probe, Ram­lo­gan re­spond­ed: "I don't know. It de­pends on what the ex­perts find."

Un­earthing im­pro­pri­ety

The probe sup­pli­ers/con­trac­tors were en­gaged with­out a con­tract, and that some con­trac­tors were per­mit­ted to start pri­or to the sign­ing of con­tracts. The ex­perts al­so not­ed the sourc­ing of sup­plies, some­times at high­er prices of­fered by com­peti­tors, with­out ad­e­quate doc­u­men­tary sup­port. Main con­trac­tors en­gaged sub con­trac­tors who were not sub­ject­ed to UTT's ten­der­ing process­es, al­though they were paid by UTT. Mes­sages left on Ram­c­hand's cell­phone were not re­turned. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Bha­jan re­fused to com­ment.