SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted he start­ed the process to pur­chase the $27 mil­lion build­ing in Ari­ma which is now un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young said Gov­ern­ment was prob­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 2012 pur­chase of the build­ing de­spite ad­vice from Gov­ern­ment’s Prop­er­ty and Re­al Es­tate Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (PRESD) that it wasn’t “the sound­est struc­ture.” Young al­so said just last month an in­de­pen­dent val­u­a­tor placed the val­ue of the prop­er­ty at $18 mil­lion, al­so claim­ing the the own­er was al­lowed to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in the build­ing rent free af­ter it was pur­chased.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Warn­er said he se­lect­ed the prop­er­ty be­cause he thought it was “an ide­al lo­ca­tion” for the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty cen­tre in Ari­ma be­cause the li­cens­ing of­fice in Ari­ma was “ab­surd, an in­sult and em­bar­rass­ment” to the pub­lic and its work­ers. But he said af­ter he be­gan the pur­chase process he was trans­ferred to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry, but said he was un­aware the prop­er­ty had not been struc­tural­ly sound.

Asked if there was a lack of over­sight on his part, Warn­er said he had the best per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the min­istry, Cheryl Black­man, who en­sured every­thing was done above board.

“If you are say­ing that there was a lack of over­sight…I do not ac­cept that at all. So all the de­tails and so on, I didn’t have it. Yes, I be­gan the process, sure,” Warn­er said, adding De­vant Ma­haraj took over the min­istry and the process there­after.

Ma­haraj has con­firmed he con­tin­ued the process af­ter Warn­er.

Asked if tax­pay­ers got val­ue for mon­ey with the $27 mil­lion pur­chase, Warn­er said, “I was in Cab­i­net when it came. At the time I thought so. The build­ing was bought in 2012 and nev­er used…as with many oth­er gov­ern­ment prop­er­ties.”

He said he was in­stru­men­tal in se­lect­ing the lo­ca­tion for the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty in Ca­roni along with sev­er­al oth­er prop­er­ties and his name was nev­er called in any­thing. He added, how­ev­er, that the blame game be­tween Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was a use­less ex­er­cise.

“It’s fool­ish... Mon­day morn­ing all we hear­ing is this one cor­rupt and that one cor­rupt. That does not make sense. The PNM say­ing UNC cor­rupt and vice ver­sa. Okay, the PP was cor­rupt and that is why they were re­moved and the PNM was put in place. If they cor­rupt, charge who cor­rupt.”

Warn­er said right now the coun­try was faced with a sit­u­a­tion with who was more cor­rupt than who.

“Peo­ple are get­ting tired of that. Every­body cor­rupt and no­body get­ting charged. What fool­ish­ness is this? This is an­oth­er probe…so what is the dif­fer­ence? What will one more probe do?

Warn­er said for years the PNM has paid rent for One Alexan­dra Place in Wood­brook, which re­mained un­der-utilised.

“They paid $1 mil­lion a month…so that too doesn’t call for a probe?”

Ef­forts to reach Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tion Rick Ali at the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the prop­er­ty’s for­mer own­er Bindra Ma­haraj were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.