SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee mem­ber Franklin Khan yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that the agent for the Su­per Fast Gali­cia, In­ter-con­ti­nen­tal Ship­ping Ltd, was paid $18 mil­lion by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment for ser­vices it nev­er pro­vid­ed to the sea bridge.

Khan al­so dis­closed that in April 2014, a cheque was sent from the then Min­istry of Trans­port to the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) to be placed in an ac­count un­til a con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed for the Gali­cia, which raised a lot of ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances.

He made the rev­e­la­tion dur­ing the sec­ond day of the in­quiry in­to the in­ter-is­land sea bridge which specif­i­cal­ly fo­cused on the pro­cure­ment and main­te­nance of the fer­ries.

Khan said the 18-month con­tract be­tween In­ter-con­ti­nen­tal Ship­ping and PATT was breached on In­ter-con­ti­nen­tal’s part when they un­ex­pect­ed­ly with­drew the Gali­cia from the sea bridge ser­vice in April of this year.

“The na­tion should know that this pre­cip­i­tat­ed the cri­sis, ”Khan said, re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing sea bridge fi­as­co.

Khan said be­fore de­part­ing our shores the coun­try did a lot of good things for the Gali­cia, which the pub­lic was un­aware of.

“And check how they be­haved at the end. I want to go on pub­lic record,” he said.

Khan re­called that a con­tract in­volv­ing the Gali­cia was signed on May 7, 2014 with an ef­fec­tive date of May 1 at $15,000 Eu­ros per day. How­ev­er, he said the boat start­ed to work the sea bridge on Au­gust 4.

“Is it that we paid over that pe­ri­od ap­prox­i­mate­ly $18 mil­lion be­fore the ves­sel worked a sin­gle day? Is that true? So this coun­try paid In­ter-con­ti­nen­tal the sum of $18 mil­lion for ser­vices not pro­vid­ed?”

This fig­ure was con­firmed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary So­nia Fran­cis- Year­wood.

Khan al­so drew ref­er­ence to an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing the Gali­cia, re­gard­ing an April 2014 cheque which was sent from the then trans­port min­istry to the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T to be placed in an ac­count on hold un­til a con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed.

“Some­thing about this com­pa­ny and this boat found favour with the then ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

Khan said while Fran­cis-Year­wood should not be blamed for this ac­tion, he queried if it was nor­mal prac­tice for a cheque to be is­sued with­out there be­ing an ex­e­cut­ed con­tract or an in­voice sub­mis­sion.

Fran­cis-Year­wood said she had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced such a sit­u­a­tion.

“Then who pos­si­bly, from your ex­pe­ri­ence, in the hi­er­ar­chy of the min­istry, could have ini­ti­at­ed an event like that... far less, get a cheque cut and sent to the Port Au­thor­i­ty un­der these ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances?"Khan en­quired.

Fran­cis-Year­wood said that would have been an ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween the Min­istry of Trans­port and Min­istry of Fi­nance.

“I don’t want to put you in a spot, it could have very like­ly in­volved a min­is­ter,” Khan said.

Fran­cis-Year­wood said she would not place her­self in that spot.

“I have ab­solute­ly no record of that time,” she re­spond­ed.