Last Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk re­port­ed that two com­pa­nies led by the wife and daugh­ter of for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings–Pi­cal Ser­vices and Rivulet In­vest­ments–were award­ed $15.6 mil­lion in HDC con­tracts 12 days ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

This week, fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions by Guardian Me­dia un­cov­ered a net­work of com­pa­nies with busi­ness and per­son­al as­so­ci­a­tions to Cum­mings, which re­ceived over $100 mil­lion in state con­tracts dur­ing the PNM gov­ern­ment’s 10-year tenure. Cum­mings, how­ev­er, has de­nied any sug­ges­tions of wrong­do­ing and main­tains awards of con­tracts were above board.

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and/or his fam­i­ly busi­ness­es re­ceived more than $102 mil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Con­tracts (HDC), Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDE­COTT), and school im­prove­ment con­tracts un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment be­tween 2015 and 2025.

Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­earthed a web of PNM con­nec­tions, work as­so­ci­a­tions, and shared reg­is­tered busi­ness ad­dress­es.

The con­tracts were award­ed to five com­pa­nies: Rivulet In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed, Kyl­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed, Austin Rogers Hold­ings Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Pi­cal Ser­vices, and Sure Surv (Serv) Lim­it­ed.

Cum­mings said he has been a busi­ness­man for the past 30 years and in­sists there was no con­flict of in­ter­est in com­pa­nies linked to him re­ceiv­ing mil­lions in state con­tracts while he served as both an MP and a salaried gov­ern­ment min­is­ter un­der the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He now serves as a PNM sen­a­tor in Par­lia­ment.

Rivulet In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed–$34.7 mil­lion

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny reg­istry doc­u­ments, the list­ed di­rec­tors of Rivulet In­vest­ment Group Lim­it­ed are Juli­et and Abi­o­la Cum­mings, the wife and daugh­ter of the for­mer Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice.

As con­firmed by the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment in its re­sponse to the 13th Re­port from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, which ex­am­ined HDC op­er­a­tions and man­age­ment, Rivulet re­ceived $34.7 mil­lion in con­tracts.

$9,223,640-HDC Mal­abar Site 3, Ari­ma-April to Au­gust 2017

$8,929,800-HDC Bon Air South-Ju­ly 2017 to May 2019

$5,114,559.38-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas

$4,275,000-HDC Bon Air South-Oc­to­ber 2016 to May 2019

$3,389,962.50-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas

$3,207,791.25-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas

$567,383.91-Mara­cas SDA Pri­ma­ry School

$453,663-UDe­COTT

Last week, Cum­mings con­firmed his in­ter­est in Rivulet In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed and Pi­cal Ser­vices (which al­so re­ceived HDC con­tracts), say­ing that “Both com­pa­nies men­tioned have been do­ing busi­ness with the Gov­ern­ment for years, cer­tain­ly pre­dat­ing my Cab­i­net and Par­lia­men­tary ap­point­ments. Ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures are presided over by the Board and man­age­ment of the HDC, and one ex­pects that all le­gal re­quire­ments are ad­hered to in the award of every HDC con­tract.”

As of 2022, ac­cord­ing to HDC doc­u­ments, Rivulet had be­tween two and four em­ploy­ees. The largest num­ber of em­ploy­ees it had be­tween 2010 and 2022 was 11.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, Pi­cal had 83 em­ploy­ees in 2010, but this num­ber dropped to ze­ro by 2022.

Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed-$20 mil­lion

Nei­ther Cum­mings nor his wife and daugh­ter is list­ed as a di­rec­tor of Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed. How­ev­er, there are mul­ti­ple con­nec­tions be­tween Cum­mings and the com­pa­ny.

As seen in the com­pa­ny reg­istry, Kly­don’s di­rec­tors are Donet­ta Pierre and One­ka May­ers.

Pierre was the for­mer sec­re­tary of Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed, owned by Cum­mings and his wife, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al re­turns.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to wit­ness state­ments pro­vid­ed in 2022 by for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al in her le­gal mat­ter with Cum­mings, “Pi­cal and Rivulet gave rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters in favour of Kly­don and con­firmed their sta­tus as sub­con­trac­tors as part of the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion pack­age ad­dressed to CEPEP. I ob­tained that afore­men­tioned in­for­ma­tion through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act and a copy of the let­ter dat­ed 7th Ju­ly 2022 from CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed ad­dressed to my at­tor­ney-at-law.”

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk viewed the let­ters af­ter ob­tain­ing pub­licly avail­able court doc­u­ments.

A let­ter from Rivulet In­vest­ment Man­ag­er Sheena Shep­pard stat­ed that “The Rivulet In­vest­ment Group is pleased to in­form you, Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd … is one of our sub­con­trac­tors on our Bon Air South Con­struc­tion Site.”

A sec­ond let­ter from Pi­cal Ser­vices stat­ed that “Please be ad­vised that Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed sub­con­tracts Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed … to col­lect garbage at Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas.”

In 2019, then op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, now Prime Min­is­ter, raised ques­tions about po­ten­tial links be­tween Cum­mings and Kly­don. She claimed that the com­pa­ny, in­cor­po­rat­ed in No­vem­ber 2015, had no shares or as­sets yet was award­ed a $1.2 mil­lion UDE­COTT con­tract to build a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

“I want to ask whether there is any link be­tween Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed, Cum­mings & As­so­ciates Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, and PI­CAL Ser­vices Lim­it­ed? And whether there is any link be­tween Sen­a­tor Cum­mings and ei­ther of these com­pa­nies?” she said at a pub­lic meet­ing in Cou­va.

In re­sponse, Cum­mings de­nied the claims, say­ing that the com­pa­nies he was as­so­ci­at­ed with were not favoured by HDC.

“I’m not do­ing any­thing in the way she’s in­sin­u­at­ing, ab­solute­ly not. The fact is, I have been in busi­ness since 1998, so this (get­ting con­tracts) isn’t a re­cent de­vel­op­ment—I’m an es­tab­lished busi­ness­man, and that sta­tus pre-dates my ap­point­ment as a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor.”

Ac­coun­tant Joel Ed­wards, who served as CEPEP chair­man be­tween 2023 and 2025, was list­ed as Kyl­don En­ter­pris­es’ ac­coun­tant. He was al­so Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed’s ac­coun­tant.

Both Cum­mings and As­so­ciates and Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed are reg­is­tered to the same busi­ness ad­dress–Unit 2, Metro Build­ing, Noel Street, Cou­va. Metro Build­ing is the Metro Ho­tel in Cou­va.

Com­pa­ny reg­istry records show that the ho­tel is owned by Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, the PNM’s 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion can­di­date for Pointe-a-Pierre.

While he con­firmed that the com­pa­nies were ten­ants and rent­ed space, he did not con­firm any oth­er con­nec­tion.

Among those who formed part of the screen­ing com­mit­tee for Ram­s­ingh’s se­lec­tion was Cum­mings.

Ram­s­ingh was al­so the for­mer Cou­va/Pt Lisas Cham­ber pres­i­dent, while his fa­ther, Nal Ram­s­ingh, con­test­ed the Cou­va North seat for the PNM in a pre­vi­ous elec­tion.

When con­tact­ed, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh said he knew the own­ers of Kyl­don En­ter­pris­es, AR Hold­ings, and Sure Serv “fair­ly ok”, adding that they are “sort of friends”.

“They have of­fices rent­ed in the Metro Ho­tel Build­ing. That is as far as the busi­ness re­la­tion­ship goes. But Fos­ter no longer has any of­fice there. Not for a few years now,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Metro Ho­tel and ob­served a tow­er­ing, dark green four-storey build­ing. Its four-pan­elled slid­ing win­dows were framed with yel­low paint. Apart from the ho­tel lob­by, there were a few busi­ness­es on the floor lev­el, in­clud­ing a spa and sa­lon and a den­tal sur­geon’s of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­istry doc­u­ments, Kly­don re­ceived at least $20 mil­lion in HDC con­tracts be­tween 2020 and 2023.

$12,896,656.71-HDC-Paid-Oct 1, 2022 to Au­gust 31, 2023

$3.85 mil­lion-In­di­an Trail Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre-UDE­COTT

$1.74 mil­lion-Ed­in­burgh 500 Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre-UDE­COTT

$2,447,550-Waste dis­pos­al at HDC Cy­press Hills Phas­es 1A, 1B & 1C-4/15/2025

$2,475,900-Waste dis­pos­al at HDC Pleas­antville

$2,253,259.32-Paid-Oct 1, 2022 to Au­gust 31, 2023

Go­ing fur­ther back, ac­cord­ing to UDE­COTT doc­u­ments, be­tween 2010 and Au­gust 2022, Kly­don re­ceived $19.2 mil­lion in con­tract pay­ments.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Kly­don di­rec­tor Donet­ta Pierre said her busi­ness was not as­so­ci­at­ed with Cum­mings. She con­firmed that Kly­don has re­ceived state con­tracts.

Austin Rogers Hold­ings Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed-$24 mil­lion

Sources fa­mil­iar with both men told Guardian Me­dia that there is a con­nec­tion be­tween Cum­mings and Austin Rogers Hold­ings Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (AR Hold­ings), with AR Hold­ings’ di­rec­tor Austin Rogers and Cum­mings be­ing good friends.

Rogers, how­ev­er, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied any busi­ness ties to Cum­mings.

“What I can say, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, is that Mr Cum­mings was a good friend of mine up to three years ago. We nev­er had a busi­ness re­la­tion­ship; nev­er. We worked along­side one an­oth­er for a num­ber of years un­til I recog­nised the thing wasn’t go­ing the way it should be go­ing, so I held my cor­ner.

“He met me in con­struc­tion as a young fel­la, and I tried to show him the ropes–to do stuff in a cer­tain way. But you see, peo­ple, when they get bright, you have to move on. For this rea­son, we are no longer friends how we used to be from 2020. And I pulled my­self out over things that don’t sit well with me and my DNA,” Rogers said.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, while the com­pa­nies don’t share di­rec­tors, Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed and AR Hold­ings are reg­is­tered to the same ad­dress–Unit 2, Metro Build­ing, Noel Street, Cou­va–the same reg­is­tered ad­dress as Kyl­don–Metro Ho­tel, owned by Mukesh Ram­s­ingh.

Told that Guardian Me­dia had in­for­ma­tion that the two com­pa­nies have the same busi­ness ad­dress, Rogers said, “No, no. My busi­ness is in Metro Ho­tel, Cou­va. We nev­er had busi­ness ties, and we nev­er will.”

A Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs source, who did not want to be named, ex­plained that com­pa­nies list­ing the same reg­is­tered ad­dress may be shar­ing of­fice space, an ac­count­ing ser­vice, or part of the same own­er­ship group, or it could raise ques­tions about own­er­ship trans­paren­cy.

Dur­ing a vis­it to Metro Ho­tel, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk, no sig­nage or of­fices were ob­served for AR Hold­ings, Cum­mings and As­so­ciates, or Kyl­don, de­spite all three list­ing the lo­ca­tion as their busi­ness ad­dress. There are al­so no ac­count­ing or law firm of­fices in the build­ing.

An­oth­er com­mon­al­i­ty be­tween AR Hold­ings and Pi­cal Ser­vices is that they share an ac­coun­tant, Prakash Ram­sa­roop.

The two re­main Face­book friends.

On a 2021 Face­book post by Cum­mings, Rogers com­ment­ed, “Great. Great, sir. You are liv­ing up to your name, Fos­ter. The en­tire coun­try, and the world by ex­ten­sion, is be­hind you, sir. Go with God, Grace, strength, and bless­ings.”

As con­firmed by CEPEP in a Face­book post dat­ed Ju­ly 2022, AR Hold­ings was al­so in re­ceipt of a CEPEP con­tract.

Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, was un­able to get a val­ue for the con­tract.

Ac­cord­ing to In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund doc­u­ments, as well as the Pub­lic Ac­counts for fis­cal 2024, AR Hold­ings re­ceived $24 mil­lion in HDC and school im­prove­ment con­tracts.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny reg­istry, an­nu­al re­turns were last filed by AR Hold­ings in 2022. Its amount of stat­ed cap­i­tal was $1. The com­pa­ny was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2003.

$5,229,013.59-HDC Ed­in­burgh South, Ch­agua­nas-$1,236,39.21 (Amount Paid as of Sept 2024)

$5,229,013.59-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas-$1,236,396.21 (Amount paid as of Sept 2024)

$4,594,685.63-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas-$3,088,873.36 (Amount paid as of Sept 2024)

$3,562,586.68-To­tal Paid Oct 1, 2022-Au­gust 31st 2023

$1,874,363.63-HDC Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers

$1,817,127.13-HDC Lisas Gar­dens, Cou­va-Ful­ly Paid-29 June 2020 (Date of Con­tract)

$961,984.79-HDC Eden Gar­dens, Freeport-24 Au­gust 2020 (DOC)

$416,952.90-Wa­ter­loo Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School-June 22, 2023

$261,971.72-Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege-Jan­u­ary 29, 2024 (In­voice)

$58,826.25 – Va­len­cia Sec­ondary School-Feb­ru­ary 2, 2024

$46,009.69 - Mon­trose Vedic Pri­ma­ry School-Dec 4, 2023

Sure Surv (Serv) Lim­it­ed-$8.3 mil­lion

While Guardian Me­dia did not ob­serve vis­i­ble of­fices for the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned busi­ness­es at Metro Ho­tel in Cou­va, it did note an of­fice for Sure Surv Lim­it­ed. The space car­ried a sign on its front door read­ing ‘Sure Surv Ltd’, with list­ed hours of Mon­day to Fri­day, 8 am to 4 pm. The win­dows were heav­i­ly tint­ed, mak­ing the in­te­ri­or dif­fi­cult to see. The front door was locked, with no sign of ac­tiv­i­ty near it. Guardian Me­dia was, how­ev­er, told that it is not un­usu­al for com­pa­nies to list reg­is­tered ad­dress­es where no ex­ter­nal sig­nage or pub­lic-fac­ing ac­tiv­i­ty is ev­i­dent.

There is on­ly one com­pa­ny called Sure Surv in the com­pa­ny reg­istry. How­ev­er, when the doc­u­ments were ex­am­ined, the com­pa­ny was ac­tu­al­ly list­ed as ‘Sure Serv Lim­it­ed’. The list­ed di­rec­tors were Ruth Cum­mings, for­mer­ly known as Ruth Walk­er, and Gail Je­re­mi­ah. The com­pa­ny's sec­re­tary was list­ed as ac­coun­tant Joel Ed­wards. Mean­while, an ap­pli­ca­tion for a name search was con­duct­ed by an­oth­er per­son who served as an ac­coun­tant at one of the oth­er com­pa­nies.

A com­pa­ny called Sure Surv Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed re­ceived more than $8 mil­lion in state con­tracts, in­clud­ing HDC and school im­prove­ment con­tracts, over the last five years.

$5,118,995-HDC Oa­sis, Ch­agua­nas

$2,409,750-Waste dis­pos­al at HDC Oa­sis Greens Phas­es 1 to 4-4/15/2025

$483,068.88-Brighton An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School-April 26, 2024 (IDF)

$259,331.63-Tabaquite RC Pri­ma­ry School-23rd June 23, 2023 (IDF)

$49,730.63-Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary School (IDF)-June 27, 2023

Cum­mings: Con­tracts above board, no con­fict of in­ter­est

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk sent ques­tions to Cum­mings ask­ing him if he or his fam­i­ly busi­ness­es have done busi­ness with Kly­don En­ter­pris­es, Rivulet In­vest­ments, AR Lim­it­ed or Sure Surv (Serv) Lim­it­ed.

We al­so asked him if he had a busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with Mukesh Ram­s­ingh and whether he ever used his of­fice/po­si­tion or for­mer po­si­tion to ob­tain favour in re­ceiv­ing HDC or Ude­cott con­tracts.

In re­sponse, an up­set Cum­mings said, “I know all these peo­ple. I know all these busi­ness­peo­ple. We had busi­ness re­la­tion­ships. I know Coos­al’s, Ju­nior Sam­my, I know all these peo­ple. So what are you try­ing to sug­gest?

“And what is wrong with Mr Ram­s­ingh rent­ing busi­ness spaces to young busi­ness peo­ple and bud­ding busi­ness peo­ple in cen­tral Trinidad? And peo­ple tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rent there and have a busi­ness space?

“What are you try­ing to sug­gest? You have an ob­jec­tive. You are try­ing to paint me as a cor­rupt politi­cian. What are the facts? Why are you not re­port­ing on oth­er busi­ness­peo­plein this coun­try? Do you have a prob­lem with busi­ness­men of a cer­tain ilk? Joshua, I will not be help­ing you de­fame me and my fam­i­ly. You print what you want, and at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, I will re­spond,” he said.

Be­fore that, Cum­mings com­plained that he did not like the tone of this au­thor’s ar­ti­cles, as, to him, they were defam­a­to­ry to him and his fam­i­ly.

“When I read your ar­ti­cle, your ar­ti­cle is in­tend­ed to cas­ti­gate and paint my fam­i­ly in a par­tic­u­lar way, which I find very un­fair, be­cause you know very well you are an in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter, you know all those con­tracts have been list­ed for a decade or more and have noth­ing to do with my role as a min­is­ter.

“There were no con­tracts award­ed (while I was min­is­ter). Those were con­tract ex­ten­sions. So you had no right to do that, and that’s very un­fair jour­nal­ism. I went in­to Par­lia­ment as a busi­ness­man, and those con­tracts ex­ist­ed be­fore my tenure as min­is­ter. What do you hope to achieve by that?

“The facts are I went in­to of­fice as a busi­ness­man. I have been a busi­ness­man for 30 years. Why are you try­ing to sug­gest as though I mis­used my of­fice? I did not do that. If you find one sin­gle con­tract that was award­ed while I was min­is­ter, then you have all right to do that,” Cum­mings said.

At a press con­fer­ence held by the PNM last Fri­day, Cum­mings again de­fend­ed his role as a busi­ness­man.

“I see here as well, or­di­nary cit­i­zens, or­di­nary busi­ness­men who have every right, as every cit­i­zen, to en­gage in busi­ness. Many of them I know. This is a small coun­try, and I come from a busi­ness back­ground. Busi­ness­men know each oth­er. Many of the names I was asked about yes­ter­day, I know all. I am fa­mil­iar with them. But I en­tered full-time pol­i­tics back in 2020, and mat­ters of busi­ness were left up to my fam­i­ly to man­age,” he said.