Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is now sad­dled with a $109 mil­lion debt to be paid by tax­pay­ers–ac­crued in­ter­est on the bil­lion-dol­lar Broadgate Place. The vi­sion was ex­pect­ed to form part of the me­trop­o­lis for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had en­vi­sioned for the cap­i­tal city. Ac­cord­ing to a well-placed source, whether the Gov­ern­ment opts to scrap or con­tin­ue the con­tro­ver­sial project, they are legal­ly bound to cov­er the debt at the ex­pense of tax­pay­ers. The debt, a Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­earthed, forms part of a gov­ern­ment-guar­an­tee US$20 mil­lion loan grant­ed by the First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank­ing (FCIB) and Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment failed to make time­ly pay­ments re­sult­ing in the high in­ter­est rate.

But the mess con­tin­ues...

Since the in­cep­tion of the project, con­cerns were raised about how a small co-op­er­a­tive so­ci­ety with on­ly 4,000 mem­bers was able to make mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ments, pur­chas­ing six prop­er­ties along South Quay, Port-of-Spain. A top cred­it union of­fi­cial said that present­ly the cred­it union's as­set base stood at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $150 mil­lion. It was stat­ed in the cred­it union's 2004 an­nu­al re­port that the board suc­cess­ful­ly ac­quired free­hold prop­er­ty at 56 and 58-60 South Quay and Nos 6, 8 and 10 Broad­way. De­funct Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) al­so had a hand to play in a $33 mil­lion trans­ac­tion to Transcorp, an of­fi­cial, who did not want to be named, said.

CIB fi­nanced the pur­chase of prime land in Port-of-Spain to the tune of $33 mil­lion while the cred­it union fund­ed the re­main­der of $6 mil­lion which was ap­proved by the com­mis­sion­er of co-op­er­a­tives. The cred­it union al­so turned to the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion for fi­nance and was grant­ed a loan in the sum of $60 mil­lion to com­mence the first phase of pre-con­struc­tion work. This loan, how­ev­er, was paid off with funds from the US$20mil­lion from FCIB. The land was ac­quired by Transcorp De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, a sub­sidiary of the cred­it union, while Bouygues Ba­ti­ment was giv­en the de­sign/build $600 mil­lion con­tract to build the 26-storey tow­er, the of­fi­cial said. The project is now stalled as in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the project is un­der way by the new Gov­ern­ment.

PNM be­trayed us

But yes­ter­day the of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named, point­ed fin­gers at for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and then pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter Lenny Saith, say­ing, "Don't blame us, blame them" for the scan­dal now brew­ing. Dis­tanc­ing it­self from cash-strapped con­glom­er­ate Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union, the of­fi­cial clear­ly stat­ed that mem­bers had noth­ing to be wor­ried about. Al­so fir­ing at cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, the of­fi­cial ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment was du­ty-bound to re­pay the loan. "We have our doc­u­ments and it states clear­ly the Gov­ern­ment is in­debt­ed to pay the loan. Since a new gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice we have sent out let­ters re­quest­ing meet­ings and no re­sponse has been forth­com­ing. "We nev­er had any plans to get in­to that sort of busi­ness. It was the for­mer prime min­is­ter who ap­proached us. He had plans to beau­ti­fy the cap­i­tal and we agreed. We have all our le­gal doc­u­men­ta­tion. "They in­sist­ed that we built the 26-storey tow­er and they will be rent­ing it out for of­fice space. We nev­er had any in­ter­est in such a project; why would a small co-op­er­a­tive like us want to get in­to that type of busi­ness?" the of­fi­cial asked. "For three years the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to drag their feet for what rea­son we do not know," the of­fi­cial said.

Ptsc Cred­it Union

The cred­it union start­ed on the com­pound of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion in Ju­ly 1966.

Three years lat­er changed the name to the Transcorp Cred­it Union (TCU).

TCU is lo­cat­ed at Pic­cadil­ly Street, Port-of-Spain.

In 1996 Transcorp De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd was formed (Broadgate).

Now has about 4,000 mem­bers.

TCU now has an as­set base of $150 mil­lion, a board mem­ber said.

TCU in 2008 had an as­set base of $60 mil­lion, Pe­ter Mo­han, chair­man of Transcorp De­vel­op­ment, had said.

About the project

The Broadgate project is a 26-storey build­ing op­po­site City Gate. It was to be con­struct­ed on 61,000 sq ft of land to in­clude high-end restau­rants, sport/health and con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties, with park­ing fa­cil­i­ty for 454 ve­hi­cles. The ground and first floors are ex­pect­ed to have a shop­ping mall while the sec­ond to the 26th floors were ex­pect­ed to be leased to Gov­ern­ment. The project was es­ti­mat­ed to cost $800 mil­lion.

Broadgate Facts

For­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning turned the sod for the project on April 9, 2007. Dur­ing his ad­dress, he stat­ed "...the Gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ing the project through the grant­i­ng (sic) of a head lease of all the of­fice space in the build­ing."

Con­struc­tion was sched­uled to be­gin in Ju­ly 2007.

Pe­ter Mo­han, chair­man of Transcorp De­vel­op­ment, in Feb­ru­ary of 2008, said con­struc­tion of the mil­lion dol­lar project was ex­pect­ed to be­gin by June, 2008.

The lease went to Cab­i­net for ap­proval and then to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to be vet­ted, Mo­han had said.

He said Transcorp De­vel­op­ment, which is be­hind the Broadgate project, on­ly got the lease in Feb­ru­ary 2008.

The project is to en­com­pass South Quay to the south, Hen­ry Street to the east and Broad­way to the west.

The French com­pa­ny Bouygues Ba­ti­ment, builders of the Wa­ter­front Project, al­so con­tract­ed to con­struct Transcorp's Broadgate Place, a 26-storey of­fice tow­er on Broad­way, Port-of-Spain.

Mo­han had said Bouygues Ba­ti­ment had as­sured TCU that it can be­gin con­struc­tion of the 30-month project in June, 2008.

They were hop­ing to have a sod-turn­ing in mid-March, 2008. "We're try­ing to keep it low-keyed," said Mo­han.

He said TCU was a 95 per cent share­hold­er in the project while Fire Ser­vices Cred­it Union owns the re­main­ing five per cent.

The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion is the lead arranger for fi­nanc­ing, Mo­han said, adding that the Michael Lee Chin-owned AIC Trinidad had pro­vid­ed a 12-month bridg­ing fa­cil­i­ty for $5 mil­lion to pay con­sul­tants, but the com­pa­ny has since been paid off.

De­mo­li­tion of the most­ly aban­doned build­ings 6, 8 and 10 Broad­way and 3-5 low­er Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, start­ed on March 3, 2008.

Mo­han said prop­er­ties were ac­quired from Char­ran's Book­store, the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church and the Bowen fam­i­ly, among oth­ers.