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Saturday, February 15, 2025

Moonilal calls for probe into OAS contract matter

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992 days ago
20220529
Dr. Roodal Moonilal

Dr. Roodal Moonilal

Gov­ern­ment must say if it is go­ing to the Lon­don courts to call for the $852 mil­lion ar­bi­tra­tion award to OAS to be set aside and dis­missed, says UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

Mooni­lal spoke at Sun­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing about the ar­bi­tra­tion award in which Gov­ern­ment has to pay OAS $852 mil­lion due to ter­mi­na­tion of the con­tract on the Point Fortin High­way.

Mooni­lal felt this de­served a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry probe and called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to in­ves­ti­gate the roles of Nid­co’s Board and Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in the is­sue.

Say­ing tax­pay­ers were the losers in the is­sue, Mooni­lal claimed Gov­ern­ment would have to pay more than the $852 mil­lion be­cause of le­gal costs and pro­fes­sion­al fees and if OAS de­mand­ed its costs be paid.

Mooni­lal said the UNC when it as­sumes Gov­ern­ment, in cas­es of monies like this, would en­sure that if a court deemed there’s breach of any law in ar­riv­ing at the ter­mi­na­tion de­ci­sion, the peo­ple who must pay this are the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors.

Al­so, if it had the Cab­i­net’s per­mis­sion, he felt the monies must “come from Kei­th Row­ley, Faris Al0 Rawi and Stu­art Young,”

He added, “We must find new laws to seize their pen­sions and gra­tu­ity pay­ments from them. It must be re­turned to the tax­pay­ers to pay bills like this where it’s deemed by the court there was such a cat­a­stro­phe in deal­ing with these mat­ters that they breached the law caus­ing big le­gal cat­a­stro­phies, us­ing the Cab­i­net as a rub­ber stamp,”

“The PM must be held ac­count­able and if we can­not get to his pen­sion, we must con­sid­er tak­ing away his goat farm if it comes to that, to pay bills ex­ist­ing when he demits of­fice.”

Mooni­lal called for Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George to say why the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed and for him and Row­ley to say if Cab­i­net sanc­tioned the ter­mi­na­tion

He said, “Gov­ern­ment must al­so iden­ti­fy the lawyers who ad­vised Nid­co to ter­mi­nate the con­tract.

“Min­is­ter Young must say what role he played and whether he de­pend­ed on a known col­league—one Ja­son Mootoo—and any US le­gal firm for this ad­vice and the cost in­curred by tax­pay­ers for such ad­vice.”

Mooni­lal named Nid­co’s nine Board mem­bers of 2016, call­ing for dis­missal of any/all still in ser­vice.

He warned UNC would pub­lish their pho­tos and chal­lenge them to ex­plain the ter­mi­na­tion de­ci­sion, their role in it and who pro­vid­ed le­gal ad­vice,

“They must be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions in ap­prov­ing the de­ci­sion to wrong­ful­ly ter­mi­nate OAS’s con­tract which led to Gov­ern­ment’s $1 bil­lion loss,” he al­so said.


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