Prospec­tive UNC can­di­date for Barataria/San Juan Sad­dam Ho­sein ques­tioned what he claimed was a $7.1 mil­lion price tag made to Ernst & Young (EY) for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA).

Speak­ing at the UNC's Gen­er­al Elec­tion meet­ing in the Oropouche East Con­stituen­cy on Tues­day,  Ho­sein pre­sent­ed doc­u­ments which he said were dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022, which he claimed out­lined the agree­ment for EY to re­ceive $625,000 per month for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.

He re­vealed that an IT Lead was hired at a to­tal cost of $65,000.

“You mean to tell me that af­ter so many young peo­ple in this coun­try grad­u­at­ed from UWI with IT de­grees, no­body in Trinidad and To­ba­go was good enough for this job?” Ho­sein asked.

Ho­sein vowed that a UNC-led gov­ern­ment would pri­ori­tise sus­tain­able job cre­ation for young peo­ple.

EY, in re­sponse, de­clined to con­firm the au­then­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ments, cit­ing its Glob­al Code of Con­duct.

“We re­spect and pro­tect con­fi­den­tial da­ta and in­for­ma­tion ob­tained from, or re­lat­ing to, clients or third par­ties, as well as per­son­al da­ta and in­for­ma­tion about EY peo­ple.” 

The firm did not re­spond to ques­tions about the se­lec­tion process by TTRA say­ing, “EY is not privy to the se­lec­tion process­es em­ployed by our clients.”

Ho­sein in­cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied Maria Daniel as "re­gion­al head" (she is Part­ner, Strat­e­gy and Trans­ac­tions) and asked if she was the for­mer part­ner of Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

When asked if she was as­so­ci­at­ed with the project, EY dis­missed this sug­ges­tion out­right, say­ing, “No, she is not.”