Yvonne Webb

For­mer San Fer­nan­do West MP Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said his in­tegri­ty is in­tact and all monies used for the con­struc­tion of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in his con­stituen­cy, dur­ing his tenure in gov­ern­ment, is above scruti­ny. Re­grel­lo's state­ment fol­lowed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre made by may­or of San Fer­nan­do Mar­lene Coudray, dur­ing the last statu­to­ry meet­ing of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.

Re­grel­lo re­ferred to an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the T&T Guardian on De­cem­ber 3 which re­port­ed the state­ments made by Coudray, dur­ing that meet­ing.

He was not named but be­lieves the state­ments point­ed to him. The ar­ti­cle read in part: "Coudray al­so took a stab at a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter over al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion where­by monies were al­lo­cat­ed for the San Fer­nan­do com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, which Coudray said did not ex­ist.

"She al­so not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion was forced to dip in­to its cof­fers and pay $7 mil­lion in out­stand­ing bills be­cause of the mis­man­age­ment and abuse of pub­lic funds which oc­curred un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion," the re­port added. "The com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre of which she speaks is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion at Cha­con Street, San Fer­nan­do," Re­grel­lo ex­plained.

"If may­or Coudray looks out of her win­dow she will see the build­ing over­look­ing the Gulf of Paria," he added. He pro­duced of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from the Project Unit of the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty and Gen­der Af­fairs, where he served as par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary, be­tween the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Eti­enne Mendez and Coudray who was then CEO of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion as well as notes of meet­ing with the for­mer May­or Ken­neth Fer­gu­son and coun­cil, to sub­stan­ti­ate his claim.

He said: "The con­trac­tor, Trin­to­plan, had to go through the cor­po­ra­tion, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and Town and Coun­try to get var­i­ous ap­provals. So to say the min­istry re­ceived mon­ey but she does not know where it has gone is dis­hon­est. "These let­ters ver­i­fy that every­thing was done with ap­proval from the City Cor­po­ra­tion," Re­grel­lo said.

With re­spect to the claims that she had to dip in­to the cof­fers of the SFCC to set­tle and out­stand­ing debt of $7 mil­lion left by the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, Re­grel­lo said: "As CEO, she was the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer."