Renu­ka Singh

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi may have suf­fered an­oth­er big le­gal loss yes­ter­day in the mat­ter be­tween the State and in­ter­na­tion­al he­li­copter provider, Cob­ham PLC. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment on the mat­ter, the State is ex­pect­ed to now pay out over US $10 mil­lion to the com­pa­ny. The State, rep­re­sent­ed by the AG’s of­fice, “lost its fi­nal ap­peal filed by Cob­ham re­lat­ing to the com­pa­ny’s ser­vice pro­vi­sions that pro­vid­ed crew, train­ing, and main­te­nance of the now per­ma­nent­ly ground­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard (TTAG) he­li­copter fleet”.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Al-Rawi who said he was not aware of the rul­ing but would con­firm whether the State had re­al­ly lost the case.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young yes­ter­day dis­tanced him­self from the mat­ter, say­ing that on­ly Al-Rawi would be able to an­swer.

“The mat­ter is han­dled by the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I am not aware of the de­tails of the lit­i­ga­tion and the var­i­ous out­comes,” he said in re­sponse to a text mes­sage yes­ter­day.

But while the AG’s of­fice re­mained silent yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment on the Col­lec­tive mag­a­zine web­site, the AG’s Of­fice had ini­tial­ly ar­gued that the con­tract was “not valid as it did not re­ceive ap­proval from the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board” but that was proven to be an in­valid de­fense as De­fense Force goods and ser­vices are ex­empt­ed from re­quir­ing Cen­tral Ten­ders Board ap­proval.

“The TT AG’s of­fice had filed two con­tin­u­ance re­quests in the suit and was seek­ing a third, blam­ing a fa­cil­i­ty move that hap­pened ear­li­er in the year as their rea­son for not be­ing ready to de­fend the case. The judg­ment was made af­ter re­fusal of the third con­tin­u­ance re­quest, or­der­ing the state to pay UK based Cob­ham US$10,638,000, and all sub­se­quent le­gal costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­fen­dants case fil­ing to re­coup the mon­ey owed,” the ar­ti­cle stat­ed.

This lat­est loss adds an­oth­er al­most $70 mil­lion to a mas­sive US$348 mil­lion paid out in 2009 when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) un­der for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning first agreed to the deal.

For­mer con­sul­tant at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty San­jay Badri-Ma­haraj yes­ter­day called the en­tire sit­u­a­tion an “em­bar­rass­ment”.

“They (Gov­ern­ment) failed to file a de­fense af­ter be­ing grant­ed ex­ten­sions,” he said.

“The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry screwed up from the in­cep­tion of this dur­ing the Man­ning era and the main­te­nance con­tract was ex­pen­sive and one-sided. Hon­est­ly, these he­li­copters should not have been pur­chased,” he said.

Badri-Ma­haraj said that the he­li­copters were too ex­pen­sive for a “fledg­ling air arm”.

“They are ex­cel­lent air­craft but we were build­ing our ca­pa­bil­i­ty from scratch. That made us vul­ner­a­ble to one-sided con­tracts,” he said.

“For a US $348 mil­lion dol­lar in­vest­ment, we got next to no op­er­a­tional use out of those he­li­copters,” he said.

Badri-Ma­haraj said that the con­tract in­clud­ed air­craft, train­ing, and main­te­nance.

“It was ex­pen­sive but then again, these are very ex­pen­sive he­li­copters to op­er­ate and main­tain,” he said.

“It was the in­ten­tion to op­er­ate the he­li­copters from both shore and the OPVs (Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels). How­ev­er, even af­ter five years of “train­ing”, we didn’t have a sin­gle ful­ly op­er­a­tional or qual­i­fied lo­cal com­mand pi­lot (pi­lot on chief). We had two par­tial­ly trained PICs,” he said.

In March 2017, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty en­tered a two-year con­tract with the com­pa­ny to pro­vide main­te­nance and tech­ni­cal sup­port the Air Guard’s four AW139 he­li­copters, ac­quired in 2009.

Par­ent com­pa­ny Cob­ham was forced to get in­volved af­ter the State ter­mi­nat­ed a con­tract with Leonar­do He­li­copters to pro­vide the ser­vice which was sub­con­tract­ed in part to Cob­ham.

In June 2017, Row­ley an­nounced the can­cel­la­tion of the ser­vice and main­te­nance as­pect of the con­tract. He said then that the Gov­ern­ment just could not af­ford that pay­ment, giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

He said then that Cab­i­net took the de­ci­sion that the State was not in a po­si­tion to pay the $200 mil­lion to main­tain our four Au­gus­ta he­li­copters for one year, ef­fec­tive­ly ground­ing the chop­pers.

Row­ley said then that his Cab­i­net had to con­sid­er whether spend­ing $200 mil­lion to main­tain the he­li­copters was the best al­lo­ca­tion of mon­ey in the fight against crime. He al­so said then that oth­er he­li­copters were avail­able to use in crime-fight­ing.

He said that while he was not averse to sell­ing off the he­li­copters, it was not un­der con­sid­er­a­tion then.