Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

A High Court rep­re­sen­ta­tive has con­firmed that the files re­lat­ing to the con­tentious re­newals of Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­tracts were sent to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) last Fri­day. Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, the DPP’s sec­re­tari­at has con­firmed re­ceipt and the doc­u­ments were trans­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

On Au­gust 7, DPP Roger Gas­pard was asked to in­ves­ti­gate the al­leged con­duct of for­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi in the pro­cure­ment of three-year con­tract re­newals for over 300 con­trac­tors in the pro­gramme. The files were sent one day lat­er.

High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed re­ferred the mat­ter to the DPP af­ter grant­i­ng an ap­pli­ca­tion by CEPEP’s le­gal team, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, to stay a law­suit filed by one of the con­trac­tors chal­leng­ing the con­tract ter­mi­na­tion.

In her 25-page rul­ing, Jus­tice Mo­hammed high­light­ed se­ri­ous con­cerns raised by CEPEP re­gard­ing a de­ci­sion by its for­mer board to ex­tend con­tracts, orig­i­nal­ly set to ex­pire next year, un­til Sep­tem­ber 2029, just days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. She de­ter­mined that CEPEP’s claim, al­leg­ing the re­newals were pro­cured through fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Cab­i­net ap­proval pur­port­ed­ly giv­en to for­mer CEPEP chair­man Joel Ed­wards by Al-Rawi, war­rant­ed fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the DPP’s of­fice.

Al-Rawi has pub­licly re­spond­ed to the court’s rul­ing and the re­fer­ral of the mat­ter to the DPP, ex­press­ing his sup­port for any “prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He em­pha­sised that cru­cial doc­u­ments, no­tably a “valid and undis­turbed 2017 Cab­i­net note,” were not sub­mit­ted to the court. He con­tends that this note, which he as­serts grants the CEPEP board the au­thor­i­ty to man­age con­tracts with­out re­quir­ing fresh Cab­i­net ap­proval, is “stark­ly rel­e­vant” and its omis­sion from the court’s con­sid­er­a­tions rep­re­sents a se­ri­ous over­sight.

For­mer board faces le­gal ac­tion

Mean­while, the cur­rent CEPEP board is con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against its pre­de­ces­sors over an al­leged breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty in con­nec­tion with the con­tro­ver­sial con­tract re­newals.

Con­fir­ma­tion of the pro­posed le­gal ac­tion came from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia, “CEPEP’s board has con­sult­ed me, and we are look­ing at the li­a­bil­i­ty of the for­mer PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) board in this fi­as­co.”

Padarath added, “There­fore, we in­tend on ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against the for­mer PNM board with re­spect to breach­ing their fidu­cia­ry du­ty through civ­il pro­ceed­ings.”

Padarath said the le­gal ac­tion against the for­mer CEPEP board is an­oth­er way the State is seek­ing to safe­guard the tax­pay­er.

“While the court has moved with alacrity in ad­dress­ing the mat­ters iden­ti­fied by Jus­tice Mo­hammed, CEPEP is al­so tak­ing steps to pro­tect the tax­pay­ers of T&T,” he said.

The for­mer CEPEP board mem­bers in­clude Joel Ed­wards, Yin­ka Jag­bir-Gar­cia, Michael Seales, Mau­ris­sa Smith, Wen­dell Williams, Bri­an Rock, Gee­ta Ram­per­sad, Robert Paul Lee, Camille Ho­sein, Kirt Bernard and Thomas Sanoir.

On Sun­day, for­mer CEPEP chair­man Joel Ed­wards de­nied col­lud­ing with Al-Rawi re­gard­ing the ex­ten­sion of con­tracts. In a let­ter from his lawyer, Ed­wards stat­ed that he nev­er spoke with Al-Rawi or re­ceived any in­struc­tions from him on the mat­ter. This con­tra­dicts a sworn af­fi­davit from CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy, who claimed Ed­wards had as­sured him Al-Rawi had con­firmed Cab­i­net ap­proval for the ex­ten­sions. Ed­wards main­tains that a board note ref­er­enc­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval was a mis­take and that he had or­dered a cor­rect­ed ver­sion but could not lo­cate it.

He de­clined to com­ment yes­ter­day on this lat­est de­vel­op­ment.

The for­mer chair­man, through his lawyer, ref­er­enced a stand­ing 2017 Cab­i­net au­tho­ri­sa­tion as the foun­da­tion for the board’s ac­tions. He main­tains the board’s ap­proval of the con­tract ex­ten­sions fell with­in the scope of this ex­ist­ing au­thor­i­ty and there­fore did not ne­ces­si­tate a fresh Cab­i­net de­ci­sion.

The cur­rent CEPEP ad­min­is­tra­tion and its le­gal team are chal­leng­ing this claim.

With re­spect to the fidu­cia­ry du­ties of State boards, a High Court judge re­cent­ly ruled that for­mer Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) CEO John Mol­len­thiel, along with sev­er­al board mem­bers, breached their fidu­cia­ry du­ties in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the now-de­funct Life­S­port pro­gramme. The le­gal case against the for­mer SporTT board fo­cused on a $34 mil­lion con­tract with eBeam In­ter­act Lim­it­ed for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy ser­vices un­der the Life­S­port pro­gramme.

The board was found to have breached its du­ty of care and dili­gence by fail­ing to prop­er­ly re­view the con­tract. Ev­i­dence re­vealed that none of the di­rec­tors had read the $34 mil­lion con­tract pri­or to ap­prov­ing it, and they ne­glect­ed to ques­tion nu­mer­ous er­rors in the pro­pos­al or as­sess the com­pa­ny’s suit­abil­i­ty.