Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

At­tor­ney De­vesh Ma­haraj is now wear­ing dif­fer­ent hats at the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA). Of­fi­cial doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that Ma­haraj's law firm-De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates-which is rep­re­sent­ing CDA in sev­er­al le­gal mat­ters, is al­so be­ing paid a month­ly fee of $15,000 to pro­vide full-time cor­po­rate/le­gal ser­vices to the CDA.

Fi­nan­cial state­ments re­veal that to date $75,000 has been paid to the law firm for the cor­po­rate/le­gal fees ser­vices. This rep­re­sents the sum paid to the law firm apart from le­gal fees in­curred by CDA for rep­re­sen­ta­tion in sev­er­al mat­ters.

Sun­day Guardian learnt that an at­tor­ney, for­mer­ly em­ployed at Ma­haraj's law firm at Mans­field Cham­bers, Aber­crom­by Street, Port- of-Spain, has been act­ing as the CDA's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary for the past five months, re­plac­ing An­drew Ra­haman who re­signed af­ter just a few months on the job.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions fur­ther re­vealed that the board has not yet ap­proved the act­ing ap­point­ment. A res­o­lu­tion was due to be passed on March 30, ap­point­ing the young at­tor­ney cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of CDA but that meet­ing has been resched­uled to a date to be an­nounced.

Chair­man Daniel Solomon heads the CDA board. Solomon and Ma­haraj both op­er­ate from Mans­field Cham­bers. Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Ma­haraj for com­ment were fu­tile. When con­tact­ed, Solomon re­ferred ques­tions to CDA's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Pe­ter Camp­bell.

Act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary: 'I do not get $15,000'

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the young at­tor­ney, who was ad­mit­ted to the Bar one year ago, con­firmed that she was pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed at Ma­haraj's law firm be­fore as­sum­ing the po­si­tion of act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary at CDA. Ad­mit­ting that she has not signed a con­tract with CDA to date, the at­tor­ney asked: "For the po­si­tion of cor­po­rate sec­re­tary I am be­ing paid a $15,000 salary?"

She added: "I can sure­ly in­form you with­out a doubt that on a month­ly ba­sis the cheque which is de­posit­ed in­to my ac­count is not any­where near $15,000. This I can sup­port with my payslip if you want. "I wish I were col­lect­ing $15,000 a month. I ap­plied for the job ei­ther mid or at the end of De­cem­ber and sub­mit­ted my re­sume and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the hu­man re­sources com­mit­tee. Thus far I am not sure of the board's po­si­tion in re­spect to the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary po­si­tion.

"No, I have not signed any con­tract with the CDA to date but I ap­plied in­de­pen­dent­ly from the cham­bers I came from for the po­si­tion of cor­po­rate sec­re­tary." Asked to ex­plain how she came to be act­ing as CDA's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, the hes­i­tant at­tor­ney re­ferred all ques­tions to Ma­haraj: "I came from the cham­bers of De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates so usu­al­ly this would be re­ferred to as a sec­ond­ment.

To be hon­est, I think the fi­nance man­ag­er per­haps would be able to in­form you bet­ter of the arrange­ment be­tween CDA and cham­bers that I came from."

Bhoe: If there is a prob­lem I will deal with it

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Plan­ning and Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie un­der whose purview CDA falls said: "I am not fa­mil­iar with the is­sue. I try to keep an arm's length with my boards and I work through the chair­man, but if there is a prob­lem that needs to be at­tend­ed to I would make sure that it is at­tend­ed to."

CDA re­sponds

CDA's PR of­fi­cer Pe­ter Camp­bell said in a re­lease the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary re­signed abrupt­ly late last year and an emer­gency re­quest was made to De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates to pro­vide those ser­vices for an in­ter­im pe­ri­od of three months. The firm com­plied with the re­quest. Fol­low­ing the end of the three-month pe­ri­od, CDA re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al time, as they had not yet com­plet­ed in­ter­views.

CDA has re­tained a re­cruit­ment agency and in­ter­views have been com­plet­ed with names of can­di­dates sup­plied by the agency. A note was to be tak­en at the last Board meet­ing, which was to be held on April 2, for the ap­point­ment of a cor­po­rate sec­re­tary. How­ev­er, the ma­jor­i­ty of the Board mem­bers did not at­tend so this has been de­ferred to the next Board meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the CDA re­lease, March 30 was the act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary's last day on the job and a fur­ther re­quest was made for her to con­tin­ue to act un­til the next Board meet­ing. Camp­bell said De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates was one of the law firms unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved at a Board meet­ing as an ad­di­tion to the CDA pan­el of at­tor­neys. The chair­man of the Board re­cused him­self from that de­ci­sion.

He ex­plained that over the last 13 months the law firms have been as­signed an ex­ten­sive amount of le­gal work as the CDA seeks to reg­u­larise ten­ants and col­lect ar­rears of rent. De­vesh Ma­haraj & As­so­ciates has in­curred some of the low­est le­gal costs to date.

The CDA spokesman said no di­rec­tor has raised any is­sue con­cern­ing any con­flict of in­ter­est and the Au­thor­i­ty is of the view there is none. He said at the Board's Le­gal and Leas­ing com­mit­tee meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 13, which the ma­jor­i­ty of Board mem­bers at­tend­ed, the com­mit­tee ex­pressed their sat­is­fac­tion with the ser­vices pro­vid­ed.

"The Au­thor­i­ty wants to state it con­tin­ues to con­duct all its busi­ness op­er­a­tions with trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the pub­lic do­main and re­mains com­mit­ted to sound busi­ness prac­tices and ethics," Camp­bell said.