Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

The Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (Plipde­co) says a two-page let­ter cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, pur­port­ing to be signed by its chair­man and in­struct­ing that projects be fast-tracked to make the Gov­ern­ment look good, is fraud­u­lent. It said the mat­ter is now en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice. 

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the state com­pa­ny, which is un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, said the con­tent in the post is “mis­lead­ing, fab­ri­cat­ed and de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed to mis­in­form the pub­lic and un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the cor­po­ra­tion.” 

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, which was pur­port­ed­ly signed by chair­man An­nette Wat­tie and di­rect­ed to vice-pres­i­dent Cur­tis Den­nie, Den­nie was in­struct­ed to fast-track four projects. 
The aim, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, was to make the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion look as though it is dri­ving tan­gi­ble, vis­i­ble de­vel­op­ment that di­rect­ly sup­ports na­tion­al eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment be­fore the elec­tion.

The let­ter is dat­ed March 12 and speaks of the elec­tion date, which was an­nounced a week lat­er by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young. 

“We cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nounce this fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment and wish to make it ab­solute­ly clear that the doc­u­ment in ques­tion is not au­then­tic and was not is­sued, ap­proved, or au­tho­rised by any rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our or­gan­i­sa­tion. The unau­tho­rised and ma­li­cious ap­pli­ca­tion of our chair­man’s pur­port­ed sig­na­ture at the base of the doc­u­ment is fraud­u­lent. We take such in­ci­dents very se­ri­ous­ly and are ac­tive­ly work­ing with law en­force­ment agen­cies to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and iden­ti­fy those re­spon­si­ble for this fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty,” the re­lease stat­ed. 

The re­lease came af­ter line min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan last week de­fend­ed Plipde­co’s pur­chase of 18 tick­ets for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment fete val­ued at $20,400. 

In the past sev­en months, Plipde­co has had se­nior man­agers re­sign or sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave as it launched an au­dit fol­low­ing an­oth­er au­dit. 
In the two in­ci­dents, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two peo­ple asked that one be im­me­di­ate­ly re­in­stat­ed and filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest in re­la­tion to what trig­gered the sus­pen­sion of the oth­er. 

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 5, at­tor­ney Vanes­sa Thomas Williams “de­mand­ed the im­me­di­ate re­in­state­ment” of her client, Richelle Ly­man, as cor­po­rate sec­re­tary. 
In a no­tice of ma­te­r­i­al change pub­lished on the TT Stock Ex­change web­site on March 21, Plipde­co said Ly­man’s leave was ex­tend­ed from March 16 to May 2. 
Ly­man was sus­pend­ed with full pay in Jan­u­ary dur­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to unau­tho­rised com­pen­sa­tion in­creas­es. Williams said based on Plipde­co’s con­tract with her client, there is no pro­vi­sion for ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, de­scrib­ing the de­ci­sion as a uni­lat­er­al im­po­si­tion. 

The sec­ond em­ploy­ee, Niegel Subi­ah, vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness ser­vices, was al­so sus­pend­ed with full pay, pend­ing the out­come of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to unau­tho­rised com­pen­sa­tion in­creas­es. 

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 28 and signed by at­tor­ney Jared Ja­groo, Subi­ah was in­formed of an in­crease in salary in Sep­tem­ber 2024. Ja­groo re­quest­ed sev­er­al doc­u­ments from the State body in re­la­tion to his client’s case.