Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

Shelly Dass has de­nied wrong­do­ing or po­lit­i­cal nepo­tism in her hir­ing as a con­sul­tant at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, and has ini­ti­at­ed pre-ac­tion le­gal steps over what she says are defam­a­to­ry claims pub­lished about her earn­ings.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter be­fore claim, is­sued by her at­tor­neys and in­struct­ing Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh L Ma­haraj, Dass sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to pur­sue defama­tion pro­ceed­ings against the pub­lish­er, ex­ec­u­tives and a re­porter of the Dai­ly Ex­press over a front-page ar­ti­cle pub­lished on Tues­day.

The let­ter, sent by at­tor­ney Shas­tine Moti­lal for RLM & Co, iden­ti­fies Dass as "an in­ter­na­tion­al and gov­ern­ment re­la­tions strat­e­gy ad­vi­sor" whose ca­reer be­gan in jour­nal­ism be­fore mov­ing in­to ad­vi­so­ry roles, in­clud­ing work in Wash­ing­ton DC with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

It says her pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer pre­dates her De­cem­ber 2020 mar­riage to for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Man­ning and in­sists she is not a mem­ber of any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, Dass was en­gaged by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion as a pri­vate con­sul­tant at a rate of US$125 per hour.

It states that be­tween late 2021 and ear­ly 2025, she earned a to­tal of TT$1,765,365.92, av­er­ag­ing TT$43,057.70 per month.

The cor­re­spon­dence takes is­sue with a head­line which claimed she "pock­et­ed" $70,000 per month, say­ing this was false and mis­lead­ing.

It al­so ob­jects to com­par­isons drawn be­tween Dass and politi­cian Wat­son Duke, ar­gu­ing the pub­li­ca­tion sug­gest­ed her com­pen­sa­tion val­i­dat­ed his.

The let­ter says the pub­li­ca­tion brought her rep­u­ta­tion in­to dis­re­pute, caused sig­nif­i­cant stress and re­sult­ed in the loss of a "pres­ti­gious in­ter­na­tion­al em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty."

It al­so re­jects a cor­rec­tion pub­lished the fol­low­ing day as in­ad­e­quate, say­ing it "con­tained fur­ther in­ac­cu­ra­cies and did not suf­fice as an apol­o­gy."

Dass is seek­ing a full and un­equiv­o­cal pub­lic re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy, along with an un­der­tak­ing that the al­le­ga­tions will not be re­peat­ed.

The let­ter says if the mat­ter is re­solved on those terms with­in sev­en days, she would for­go a claim for dam­ages and le­gal costs.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Dass con­firmed the mat­ter is now be­fore her at­tor­neys.

"It's in the hands of lawyers," Dass said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

"Every­thing was trans­par­ent and above board. This mess, this mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is in the hands of lawyer."

Dass’ salary was pub­lished along­side those of for­mer THA As­sem­bly­man Joel Jack and Duke, whose hir­ing as a hu­man re­sources and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant at NGC drew pub­lic scruti­ny af­ter his $40,000 month­ly salary was dis­closed.

Sources fa­mil­iar with Dass’ hir­ing say she went through a rig­or­ous and high­ly scru­ti­nised re­cruit­ment process, in­clud­ing as many as six rounds of in­ter­views de­scribed as "ex­cru­ci­at­ing," along with re­peat­ed cross-ex­am­i­na­tion be­fore be­ing placed on an ini­tial six-month re­tain­er.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen to ask whether he had con­cerns about Dass’ or Jack’s salary or hir­ing process. He said, “I have no com­ment on that,” be­fore end­ing the call.

Fol­low-up ques­tions were sent via email and text, in­clud­ing queries on whether oth­er con­sul­tants were hired dur­ing his tenure and at what cost.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands a cur­rent vice-pres­i­dent at NGC was first en­gaged as a con­sul­tant af­ter be­ing dis­missed from an­oth­er state com­pa­ny.

Calls to Joel Jack for com­ment on his in­volve­ment at Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd went unan­swered.

The con­tro­ver­sy comes amid wider scruti­ny of con­sul­tan­cy arrange­ments at NGC. For­mer min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell and Sen­a­tor Wen­dell Ever­s­ley have sub­mit­ted a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest seek­ing de­tails of Duke’s en­gage­ment, in­clud­ing pro­cure­ment and ap­proval process­es, eval­u­a­tion doc­u­ments, over­sight mech­a­nisms and any con­flict of in­ter­est checks.