Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

As the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) and line min­is­ter for Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd con­tin­ue to re­main silent on al­le­ga­tions of breach­ing pro­cure­ment law, al­le­ga­tions re­main that the new­ly formed state en­ter­prise in­ten­tion­al­ly tried to re­strict com­pe­ti­tion and ex­clude qual­i­fied con­trac­tors.

On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) is prob­ing new­ly formed Land­mark­TT over al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the pro­cure­ment process for a con­tract worth $100 mil­lion re­lat­ing to the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Corinth.

The OPR said it re­ceived com­plaints that Land­mark­TT may have im­prop­er­ly used se­lec­tive ten­der­ing in­stead of open bid­ding, po­ten­tial­ly breach­ing pro­cure­ment laws.

Guardian Me­dia ac­quired one of those com­plaints sub­mit­ted to the OPR by at­tor­ney and for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell and PNM MP Stu­art Young, on be­half of busi­ness­man Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, who is call­ing for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the state en­ter­prise’s han­dling of the con­tract.

In the com­plaint dat­ed April 18, Mitchell said the pro­cure­ment process un­der­tak­en by Land­mark­TT for the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment was “struc­tured as a De­sign–Build–Fi­nance pro­cure­ment.”

He not­ed that the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als was is­sued “on or about March 9, 2026” and re­quired bid­ders to sub­mit “com­plete de­sign, tech­ni­cal and fi­nanc­ing pro­pos­als by March 23, 2026.”

“The time­frame af­ford­ed was there­fore less than two weeks for the prepa­ra­tion of com­plex sub­mis­sions in­volv­ing en­gi­neer­ing de­sign and the se­cur­ing of sub­stan­tial fi­nanc­ing,” the com­plaint stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, con­trac­tors were al­so re­quired to demon­strate ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, re­port­ed­ly in the re­gion of $100 mil­lion, with­in that same pe­ri­od, while at­tend­ing manda­to­ry site vis­its short­ly af­ter the pro­pos­als were is­sued.

Mitchell fur­ther al­leged that Land­mark­TT re­fused a re­quest for an ex­ten­sion of time.

“By email cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed March 17, 2026, Land­mark­TT ex­press­ly re­fused a rea­son­able re­quest for an ex­ten­sion of time, in­di­cat­ing that the dead­line would not be al­tered and that pro­po­nents were ex­pect­ed to sub­mit with­in the ex­ist­ing time­frame,” the com­plaint stat­ed.

The com­plaint al­so point­ed to a Land­mark­TT me­dia re­lease dat­ed April 14, which al­leged­ly con­firmed that the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed us­ing a “se­lec­tive or lim­it­ed ten­der­ing process” in­volv­ing “on­ly a small, pre-se­lect­ed group of con­trac­tors.”

It fur­ther not­ed that on­ly two pro­po­nents ul­ti­mate­ly sub­mit­ted bids and that the con­tract was award­ed to a sin­gle con­trac­tor.

Un­der the sec­tion ti­tled “Na­ture and Con­text of the Com­plaint,” Mitchell ar­gued that the con­cerns did not arise from a sin­gle iso­lat­ed is­sue, but rather from a com­bi­na­tion of fea­tures of the pro­cure­ment process, when viewed in their to­tal­i­ty.

“These in­clude the struc­ture and tim­ing of the pro­cure­ment it­self, the con­di­tions im­posed on par­tic­i­pa­tion, and con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous pub­lic re­port­ing which con­sis­tent­ly rais­es con­cerns re­gard­ing trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and the in­tegri­ty of the process,” the com­plaint stat­ed.

The com­plaint ar­gued that the com­pressed time­lines, high fi­nan­cial thresh­olds and use of se­lec­tive ten­der­ing raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about whether the process could sup­port gen­uine com­pe­ti­tion.

Mitchell con­tend­ed that while each is­sue may in­di­vid­u­al­ly ad­mit of ex­pla­na­tion, tak­en to­geth­er they dis­closed a pat­tern of con­cern suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny.

The com­plaint al­so cit­ed mul­ti­ple sec­tions of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act and ac­com­pa­ny­ing reg­u­la­tions, ar­gu­ing that open bid­ding is the de­fault pro­cure­ment method and that any de­par­ture from that stan­dard must be prop­er­ly jus­ti­fied and doc­u­ment­ed.

It fur­ther al­leged there was a deficit in trans­paren­cy, point­ing to what it de­scribed as the ab­sence of pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria and method­ol­o­gy.

Mitchell ad­di­tion­al­ly ques­tioned whether the stand­still pe­ri­od im­ple­ment­ed af­ter the award de­ci­sion was prac­ti­cal­ly ef­fec­tive, giv­en the com­pressed na­ture of the pro­cure­ment process.

The com­plaint asked the OPR to ex­er­cise its statu­to­ry pow­ers un­der sec­tions 41 and 42 of the Act to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ob­tain Land­mark­TT’s pro­cure­ment records, in­clud­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to con­trac­tor se­lec­tion, eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the pro­cure­ment method and due dili­gence con­duct­ed.

“This mat­ter in­volves the ex­pen­di­ture of sub­stan­tial pub­lic funds and di­rect­ly en­gages the in­tegri­ty of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem,” Mitchell said. “It is there­fore a mat­ter of con­sid­er­able pub­lic im­por­tance which war­rants care­ful and time­ly scruti­ny by the Of­fice in the ex­er­cise of its statu­to­ry man­date.”

Land­mark­TT’s CEO, Nis­chall Shane Poona and Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein have still not re­spond­ed to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions or re­quests to speak.

Work con­tin­ued yes­ter­day on the Al­lam­by de­vel­op­ment as no sus­pen­sion or­der was is­sued by the OPR, some­thing for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has chal­lenged the reg­u­la­tor on.

On Mon­day, the OPR said the ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments it re­quest­ed from Land­mark­TT are un­der re­view, and it will not speak fur­ther on the mat­ter at this time.