The $356 mil­lion debt still owed to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has de­layed the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial re­ports for more than three months.

The de­lay al­so cre­at­ed a fi­nan­cial rip­ple ef­fect for TSTT's hold­ing com­pa­ny, the Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) as it to was un­able to com­plete its fi­nan­cial re­port be­cause of the miss­ing TSTT doc­u­ments.

The TSTT was sup­posed to pro­duce its com­plet­ed au­dit­ed state­ments by June 29 but it was on­ly com­plet­ed on Sep­tem­ber 9 and is "to be for­ward­ed to share­hold­ers short­ly."

In a state­ment to its share­hold­ers, the NEL said that "ow­ing to the de­lay in the com­ple­tion of our Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the fis­cal year end­ed March 31, 2019, as a re­sult of is­sues out­side of our con­trol, we have been un­able to pub­lish the unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the first quar­ter end­ed June 30, 2019."

The NEL chair­man In­grid Lash­ley on Thurs­day con­firmed that the TSTT re­port was not yet com­plete but ex­pect­ed it "any time now."

"One in­vestee com­pa­ny has been late in sub­mit­ting its fi­nan­cials. That in­vestee com­pa­ny is TSTT," Lash­ley said.

Lash­ley added that the TSTT fi­nan­cials have since been "signed off" but she has not re­ceived it yet.

Last No­vem­ber it was re­port­ed that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty owed TSTT some $356 mil­lion for a CCTV con­tract.

By Feb­ru­ary, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte de­nied that the debt was neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the com­pa­ny. Le Hunte told Par­lia­ment then that the ex­act amount has not yet been es­tab­lished.

Back in Jan­u­ary, TSTT was pro­vid­ing CCTV ser­vices to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry un­der a con­tract es­tab­lished by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion how­ev­er, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said then, that he in­tend­ed to end the con­tract be­cause the cost was too high.

At a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Jan­u­ary, Young pegged the fig­ures at be­tween $11,000 and $14,000 per cam­era each month.

TSTT chair­man Robert May­ers and TSTT's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Dr Ronald Wal­cott did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.

The NEL has hold­ings in Na­tion­al Flour Mills, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Trin­gen as well as TSTT.

This is not the on­ly de­layed TSTT au­dit.

Since Jan­u­ary, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties called for a "re-ex­am­i­na­tion" of two au­dits pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed by TSTT af­ter a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that ques­tions were raised about mis­pend­ing and pref­er­en­tial treat­ment grant­ed to a sin­gle sup­pli­er.

In June, Le Hunte said he ex­pect­ed the re­port to be com­plet­ed with­in the month but that has not hap­pened.

At that time, May­ers said that Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion which was sub­se­quent­ly pro­vid­ed.

One month lat­er, Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact TSTT's Wal­cott but he did not re­spond to calls or what­sapp since Ju­ly. Sev­er­al emails were al­so sent to two mem­bers of TSTT com­mu­ni­ca­tions team with no re­sponse.