The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to land ac­qui­si­tion for the Point Fortin High­way is ex­pect­ed to start some­time af­ter Car­ni­val, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day.

Al-Rawi, who com­ment­ed briefly while at a Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) meet­ing over­seas, said the en­quiry will be held at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex in Port-of-Spain.

The en­quiry, an­nounced by Gov­ern­ment last Ju­ly, is head­ed by re­tired Jus­tice Se­bastien Ven­tour. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said last De­cem­ber that the CoE would start in Jan­u­ary “soon af­ter Christ­mas.”

The probe stemmed from a Works Min­istry re­port done on com­pen­sa­tion for the project. The gov­ern­ment claimed some peo­ple were paid for land that was no longer need­ed, oth­ers re­ceived mil­li­on-dol­lar pay­ments and claimed more and some peo­ple in one house­hold were each com­pen­sat­ed for the same prop­er­ty.

It was al­so al­leged that a per­son do­ing land val­u­a­tions “un­jus­ti­fi­ably” in­creased the val­ue of lands he had al­ready as­sessed.

The CoE is al­so ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on whether a Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight team head­ed by then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ful­filled its man­date.

The CoE will de­ter­mine whether the PP breached any du­ties and whether crim­i­nal or civ­il pro­ceed­in­gs should be ini­ti­at­ed. A PP team presided over the project’s fund­ing, time-de­liv­ery and oth­er mat­ters. Gov­ern­ment claimed the PP com­mit­tee hired pri­vate en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing lawyers, to han­dle com­pen­sa­tion ne­go­ti­a­tions and some of it ap­peared “ex­ces­sive.”

Gov­ern­ment sources said al­though pub­lic hear­ings haven’t start­ed, CoE of­fi­cials have in re­cent months been re­ceiv­ing doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion on the project for their re­search.

The CoE team, com­pris­ing sev­er­al oth­er at­tor­neys apart from Ven­tour, have al­so toured the fa­cil­i­ty at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex where hear­ings will be held. De­tails for use of the area are be­ing fi­nalised be­fore the CoE be­gins to use it.

Par­lia­ment re­lo­cat­ed from 13 floors at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex to the Red House re­cent­ly. Those emp­ty fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing con­vert­ed to 24 court­rooms which will be com­plet­ed at the end of May, Ude­cott has in­di­cat­ed.