De­bra Wanser and Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The shady and mys­te­ri­ous op­er­a­tions at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of the T&T (Ude­cott) is in no way close to be­ing un­rav­elled. A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that the mess con­tin­ued af­ter the res­ig­na­tion of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, and mere weeks be­fore the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­earthed that shady deals, botched con­tracts and flawed ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures have left the State-owned com­pa­ny in a sink­ing hole of debt amount­ing to a whop­ping $7.7 bil­lion–set to be a big drain on the trea­sury. The bil­lion-dol­lar debt re­flects the com­pa­ny's loan port­fo­lio for pri­vate sec­tor fi­nanc­ing at the end of Feb­ru­ary of this year.

Of­fi­cial Ude­cott doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian showed that gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loans grant­ed from sev­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions dur­ing the pe­ri­od be­tween 2008 to 2009 were bor­rowed to fund sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment projects and for the pay­ment of con­trac­tors. How­ev­er, in some in­stances the for­mer gov­ern­ment failed to up­keep the agree­ment with the lend­ing fa­cil­i­ties ac­cru­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in in­ter­est. In fact, fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments showed that on June 4, 2008 Ude­cott took a gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loan from First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) for the sum of $320 mil­lion. The loan, as stat­ed, was list­ed to cov­er var­i­ous projects an agreed to be re­paid in De­cem­ber 2009 by Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, Ude­cott did not meet its dead­line to re­pay the loan but made pay­ments of $30,000,000 in in­ter­est on the loan fa­cil­i­ty. But, Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the huge debt is on­ly part­ly to blame for the messy and sticky op­er­a­tions oc­cur­ring at the com­pa­ny even af­ter the old board was fired in March of this year. And the two se­nior ex­ec­u­tives–busi­ness and op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, Ri­car­do O'Brien, and hu­man re­source man­ag­er, Nadya Yarsien–who were sus­pend­ed af­ter they were al­leged­ly caught on cam­era pho­to­copy­ing im­por­tant doc­u­ments, were said to be tar­gets in the pond as sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion con­tin­ues to be leaked.

Mys­te­ri­ous prac­tices at Ude­cott

So why hasn't the mys­te­ri­ous op­er­a­tions not ceased at Ude­cott af­ter Hart ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion and fled the coun­try? Well-placed sources said, it seemed that a hand or hands kept pulling the strings be­hind the scenes, con­tin­u­ing in al­most the same man­ner as the op­er­a­tions which failed to ad­here to prop­er prac­tices. In­ves­ti­ga­tions showed that for a cer­tain com­pa­ny-the pre­ferred choice by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and who con­tin­ues to adorn the PM's res­i­dence with week­ly flo­ral arrange­ments cost­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8,000–has been op­er­at­ing with­out a con­tract.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions fur­ther re­vealed that au­dit­ed state­ments for 2007 have not yet been signed off as there have been con­cerns raised by a rep­utable ac­count­ing firm, while the 2008/2009 ac­counts are now be­ing hur­ried­ly pre­pared to be au­dit­ed. Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have been ask­ing for au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments from Ude­cott. Mean­while, cur­rent fi­nan­cial ac­counts for 2010 are still out­stand­ing.

"In ad­di­tion, an is­sue was raised sur­round­ing the award of the Parkade con­tract to (com­pa­ny names) af­ter the com­pa­ny re­ceived $350,000 plus vat since No­vem­ber 2009 and no one has seen the award let­ter stip­u­lat­ing the amount to be paid," a Gov­ern­ment source said.

$50 mil­lion pre-elec­tion pay out

Pri­or to the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, the Gov­ern­ment source said, hefty pay­outs were made to big con­trac­tors and a $5 mil­lion cheque was col­lect­ed by a cer­tain con­trac­tor on the morn­ing of the elec­tion. The pay­outs were made pos­si­ble, the source said, via a $100 mil­lion loan grant­ed by First Cit­i­zens Bank ten days be­fore elec­tion. Pay­ments amount­ing to $50.6 mil­lion was paid out to six large con­trac­tors weeks be­fore the elec­tion–with the largest pay­ment to one con­trac­tor be­ing $18.6 mil­lion. Ude­cott's small con­trac­tors, mean­while, were told there was no funds.

Queries sur­round­ing Ude­cott's bank ac­counts

Sun­day Guardian al­so learnt that queries have been raised sur­round­ing the use of Ude­cott's Projects and Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment bank ac­count at Citibank. The ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es ac­count at FCB was set up for use of op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es on­ly. How­ev­er, doc­u­ments showed that the short-term loan that was re­ceived in May 2010 from FCB was cred­it­ed to this ac­count. "A por­tion was trans­ferred to Citibank and the ma­jor­i­ty still re­mains at FCB. Project pay­ments are now be­ing made from both ac­counts." In May and June, this was be­ing used to cred­it pay­ments di­rect­ly to the ac­counts of con­trac­tors. Cheques from the FCB ac­count were al­so be­ing used to pay con­trac­tors.

LEFT: Jear­lean John

Jear­lean: I have noth­ing to gain

Stat­ing clear­ly that she had noth­ing to gain by de­fend­ing Ude­cott, chair­man of Ude­cott Jear­lean John yes­ter­day did not ad­mit or de­ny if the com­pa­ny was in debt. How­ev­er, John said, Ude­cott bor­rowed loans for clients. "Ude­cott was not bor­row­ing mon­ey for them­selves; when monies are bor­rowed it is bor­rowed for clients... Ude­cott does it for clients which are the var­i­ous min­istries." On the is­sue of ac­counts not be­ing bal­anced, John said the com­pa­ny was still work­ing with au­di­tors.

"When you do ac­counts, queries will be raised and you have to go back and re­spond. This is done by a man­age­ment let­ter and you now have to go back and an­swer queries... That is what Ude­cott is do­ing.

"The rea­son why ac­counts are not signed off is be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has changed. I met with Price­wa­ter­house(Coop­ers), but the Gov­ern­ment has changed and we are giv­ing the new min­is­ter an op­por­tu­ni­ty. I am not mak­ing an ex­cuse for the fact that the ac­counts for 2007 have not been set­tled, but these things al­so oc­cur in the pub­lic ser­vice.To­day (yes­ter­day) is Sat­ur­day, but I am sure that on Mon­day the rel­e­vant per­sons will be able to re­spond to the nec­es­sary ques­tions you need to be an­swered."

LEFT: Mary King

King in the dark

When con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic, So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs Mary King, un­der who Ude­cott falls, said she had ab­solute­ly no knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion. "You are telling me stuff I have nev­er heard of. How could I com­ment? I have nev­er seen any ac­counts dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 28, I will ap­pre­ci­ate if you can for­ward your doc­u­ments to me."