Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Re­ports al­leg­ing mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic funds, im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices, and gross mis­con­duct at the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT) have been sent to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The re­ports out­lin­ing cor­rupt prac­tices were sent by two man­agers at the com­pa­ny.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained copies of three re­ports.

The last let­ter rais­ing con­cerns was sent to the prime min­is­ter on March 31 and some of the al­le­ga­tions in the re­port dat­ed back to 2018. The let­ters were al­so sent to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and are ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

In a sep­a­rate de­vel­op­ment, Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that the Fi­nance Man­ag­er has been sus­pend­ed with pay un­til fur­ther no­tice pend­ing a dis­ci­pli­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We ob­tained a copy of the sus­pen­sion let­ter which was signed by VM­COTT’S Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Natasha Prince. The in­ci­dent oc­curred in Feb­ru­ary.

VMCOTT CEO Natasha Prince

ANISTO ALVES

The Hu­man Re­source Man­ag­er who start­ed work­ing at the state agency in Oc­to­ber 2022 is cur­rent­ly on sick leave and ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work soon.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that there are le­gal pro­ceed­ings as well be­ing brought against the top-lev­el ex­ec­u­tives by oth­er man­agers at VM­COTT.

Prince did not re­spond to calls and mes­sages from Guardian Me­dia.

Sinanan, mean­while, said, “All I could say, like any­thing else, once we re­ceive a let­ter of com­plaint or some­thing from an in­di­vid­ual, it is in­ves­ti­gat­ed and this will be dealt with in the same man­ner. Once I see a let­ter, these let­ters were sent to the min­istry at the end of the month, once that let­ter is re­ceived, the let­ter will be giv­en at­ten­tion and if an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is war­rant­ed, it will be done.”