Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) Gary Par­mas­sar was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, pend­ing a fi­nan­cial au­dit in­to the award­ing of $400 mil­lion worth of con­tracts at the State-owned com­pa­ny.

Yes­ter­day, in an ex­change of text mes­sages with the Sun­day Guardian, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat con­firmed that on Fri­day "Par­mas­sar pro­ceed­ed on leave by agree­ment with the com­pa­ny's board of di­rec­tors."

Ramb­harat re­vealed that au­dit­ing firm Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers "has been en­gaged to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit on cer­tain mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­struc­tion con­tracts award­ed by the EM­BD in 2015. The au­di­tors have tak­en pos­ses­sion of all elec­tron­ic and pa­per records re­lat­ing to the con­tracts."

Ramb­harat re­vealed that the con­tracts were val­ued at "just over $400 mil­lion."

The Sun­day Guardian learnt that on Fri­day, Par­mas­sar re­ceived a let­ter from EM­BD's chair­man Ron­nie Mo­hammed in­form­ing that he was to be sent on leave with full pay.

The move comes two months af­ter man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Jear­lean John and sev­en oth­er man­agers were sent on three months leave in or­der to car­ry out an au­dit.

John has since chal­lenged the mat­ter in court.

From Oc­to­ber 2014 to Ju­ly 2015, Par­mas­sar act­ed as EM­BD's CEO.

When Par­mas­sar was ap­point­ed CEO sev­en months ago, he signed a three-year con­tract.

Yes­ter­day, a source at the EM­BD said that Par­mas­sar was asked to hand over the lap­top he used and the com­pa­ny's cell­phone.

In­for­ma­tion stored on both elec­tron­ic de­vices was copied by the au­di­tors. The cell­phone was re­turned to Par­mas­sar late Fri­day.

Par­mas­sar was al­so es­cort­ed out of the EM­BD's of­fice in Val­sayn by se­cu­ri­ty guards and told not to re­turn to work un­til the au­di­tors con­clud­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

For­mer min­is­ter of hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, un­der whose purview EM­BD fell, said moves by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment to send con­tract­ed em­ploy­ees on leave were be­com­ing ha­bit­u­al and con­sis­tent.

Mooni­lal said the par­ty was clue­less as to how to go for­ward or how to beat the chal­lenges of the eco­nom­ic times.

In the com­ing days, Mooni­lal said, he would raise the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment, in par­tic­u­lar the se­lec­tion of au­dit­ing com­pa­nies by the PNM and "the role one min­is­ter in par­tic­u­lar has been play­ing in the se­lec­tion of the au­dit­ing com­pa­nies."

Mooni­lal said once em­ploy­ees are sent on leave this tar­nish­es their rep­u­ta­tion and un­der­mines their fu­ture em­ploy­ment prospects.