An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme’s (CEPEP) chair­man Joel Ed­wards says he nev­er had any con­ver­sa­tion with or got in­struc­tion from then line min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi on the pro­gramme’s (CEPEP’s) $1.4 bil­lion in con­tract ex­ten­sions.

The rev­e­la­tion came yes­ter­day, as Ed­wards’ lawyer, St Clair O’Neil, wrote to Free­dom Cham­bers’ Jared Ja­groo, in re­sponse to me­dia re­ports which quot­ed Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, as call­ing on Ed­wards to clear the air on Al-Rawi’s in­volve­ment in the mat­ter.

In the strong­ly word­ed let­ter to Ja­groo, O’Neil dis­closed, “Rel­a­tive to your char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions, sup­po­si­tions and en­quiries as to Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi SC’s role and in­volve­ment as the then line min­is­ter for CEPEP, my client in­structs that he nev­er had any con­ver­sa­tion with or in­struc­tion from then Min­is­ter Al-Rawi about a re­cent Cab­i­net de­ci­sion as po­ten­tial­ly con­tem­plat­ed or open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion by the Board Note in ques­tion.

“My client in­structs that he re­calls that dur­ing his tenure as chair­man of CEPEP, he had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions, from time to time, in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances and con­texts with the CEO, the min­is­ter and oth­ers about the

2017 Cab­i­net de­ci­sion and the au­thor­i­ty that it gave to the board in dif­fer­ent as­pects un­der oral dis­cus­sion.”

Ed­wards fur­ther de­nied ever mis­lead­ing the board, as­sert­ing that any per­ceived mis­state­ment in a board note could have been clar­i­fied had the board met again.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that meet­ing did not oc­cur due to the pas­sage of the Gen­er­al Elec­tions,” the let­ter not­ed.
In the let­ter, a copy of which Guardian Me­dia ob­tained, O’Neil con­demned CEPEP’s let­ter of Au­gust 8, which was emailed to them late on Sat­ur­day (Au­gust 9), claim­ing the cor­re­spon­dence ap­peared in three all dai­ly news­pa­pers be­fore it was even re­viewed by them.

“This ac­tion ap­pears to be the pri­or­i­ty above en­gag­ing in prop­er pre-ac­tion pro­to­col ex­changes,” O’Neil wrote.

“I am left with the in­ex­orable con­clu­sion that your re­sponse… was pro­vid­ed to the me­dia long be­fore it was emailed to me.”
O’ Neil ac­cused the CEPEP lawyers of de­lib­er­ate­ly weapon­is­ing the me­dia, claim­ing they de­nied him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond on be­half of his client be­fore the pub­lic was ex­posed to “sen­sa­tion­al­ly craft­ed al­le­ga­tions” in “an at­tempt to per­se­cute” his client.
Yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle stat­ed that the calls by Ram­lo­gan fol­lowed the High Court’s re­fer­ral of the mat­ter to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for pos­si­ble crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.
In a let­ter last week, af­ter the High Court rul­ing, Ed­wards’ at­tor­ney sought more time to re­spond, in­di­cat­ing Ed­wards had trav­el plans and would be out of the coun­try un­til the end of Au­gust.
De­spite this re­quest, Ja­groo ques­tioned why Ed­wards could not pro­vide in­struc­tions via email or a vir­tu­al meet­ing. Ja­groo ac­cused Ed­wards of hav­ing a flip­pant at­ti­tude to a se­ri­ous is­sue with crim­i­nal and civ­il con­se­quences in law.

In an af­fi­davit filed in the High Court, Ed­wards claimed the board note signed and cir­cu­lat­ed for the ex­ten­sion of all CEPEP con­tracts was done in er­ror and that a re­vised amend­ed board note was cir­cu­lat­ed. He claimed he could not find the amend­ed board notes in his records.
How­ev­er, Ed­wards did not re­spond to CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy’s state­ment that Ed­wards had in­formed him Al-Rawi said the Cab­i­net had ap­proved the con­tract ex­ten­sions.

O’ Neil, in his let­ter, al­so cit­ed an au­dit by the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee, which re­port­ed­ly eval­u­at­ed CEPEP’s in­ter­nal con­tract de­ci­sions, sug­gest­ing that con­tract prac­tices were long-stand­ing and known to both man­age­ment and line min­is­ters.
O’Neil char­ac­terised the en­tire se­quence of events as a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed ef­fort to dam­age his client’s rep­u­ta­tion. He ac­cused CEPEP and rel­e­vant pub­lic of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, of non-dis­clo­sure and con­ceal­ment of ma­te­r­i­al ev­i­dence in on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings.

“My client is be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly per­se­cut­ed for naked po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es,” the let­ter stat­ed, warn­ing CEPEP that any pre­ma­ture fil­ing of le­gal pro­ceed­ings dur­ing his trav­el abroad would be met with a firm le­gal re­sponse and cost sanc­tions.

With lit­i­ga­tion loom­ing and crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions po­ten­tial­ly on the hori­zon, O’Neil warned that CEPEP’s ac­tions could back­fire in court and the court of pub­lic opin­ion.