Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress wants to know who got $5 bil­lion worth of con­tracts which were al­leged­ly is­sued in vi­o­la­tion of pro­cure­ment law via “ex­ces­sive use of lim­it­ed and non-com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment meth­ods.

That’s what UNC Shad­ow Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to re­veal yes­ter­day as he not­ed the find­ings of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan’s re­cent­ly re­leased re­port. The re­port came af­ter the first year that pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion came in­to force in the pub­lic sec­tor.

“Who got $5 bil­lion in con­tracts and why? ... I chal­lenge the Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter to pro­vide the truth on this mat­ter,” Tan­coo said at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing in Ch­agua­nas.

“I call for an im­me­di­ate and pub­lic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whose pock­ets this $5 bil­lion has gone. I al­so call on the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor to pro­vide a full list of the com­pa­nies or in­di­vid­u­als who re­ceived these con­tracts.”

Tan­coo raised ques­tions on is­sues cit­ed in two re­ports laid in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day - the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s Re­port and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Spe­cial Re­port on T&T’s 2023 ac­counts.

He added, “I thank God for the pa­tri­ot­ic men and women of T&T who’ve de­cid­ed that they will not tol­er­ate the thug­gery and bul­ly­ing ... In­stead, a few have cho­sen to stand tall and do their du­ty as in­de­pen­dent of­fice hold­ers, un­afraid of the cir­cum­stances.”

Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment will come to Par­lia­ment with the 2025 Bud­get in a cou­ple weeks seek­ing to make peo­ple feel T&T’s in a bet­ter place thanks to them. But he said as Im­bert pre­pares his Bud­get he has ques­tions to an­swer.

Tan­coo said the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s re­port, “.. is a damn­ing tale of how this PNM Gov­ern­ment, open­ly flaunt­ing the very laws they passed, open­ly break­ing the laws in the award of con­tracts, are throw­ing away bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and re­fus­ing to ac­count for it.”

He said the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor’s re­port not­ed that in one year, con­tracts val­ued at just about $5B were award­ed by gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions through “ex­ces­sive use of lim­it­ed and non-com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment meth­ods.”

“That means that in one year, $5 bil­lion in con­tracts were award­ed (and that ac­counts for on­ly those re­port­ed), with­out law­ful ten­der­ing, with­out le­git­i­mate eval­u­a­tions, with­out trans­par­ent as­sess­ments and in open vi­o­la­tion of Pro­cure­ment Law - $5B is al­most 10 per cent of T&T’s an­nu­al bud­get!”

Ad­dress­ing the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, he said,”Tell us who got the con­tracts, if the work was done, who au­tho­rised the ten­der, who com­prised the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, who signed off on the process, who au­tho­rised the pay­ment of this $5 bil­lion, which state agency is in­volved?

“Was this mon­ey used to give con­tracts to gangs? Or buy ‘mus­cle’ for elec­tions?” he added.

Tan­coo asked of Im­bert, “Where de mon­ey gone? If there’s noth­ing to hide, why are they hid­ing? Why are these agen­cies break­ing the law? Why has noth­ing been done to stop it?”

He cau­tioned per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials not to al­low PNM ap­pointees and min­is­ters to make them com­pro­mise their in­tegri­ty and com­mon sense.

Tan­coo al­so called for an­swer on the re­port’s oth­er find­ings that sin­gle and sole source meth­ods were fre­quent­ly used in con­tract award.

“This means that in award of con­tracts in some min­istries, state boards and statu­to­ry bod­ies, con­trac­tors were be­ing hand picked and award­ed mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts with ab­solute­ly no ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Do you guess why PNM min­is­ters and boards are silent? Or the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, who’s re­spon­si­ble for pay­ments on con­tracts?”

He not­ed a Guardian Me­dia re­port had stat­ed whistle­blow­ers made 60 re­ports of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ing cor­rup­tion, bribery and bid rig­ging and min­istries were among cul­prits which failed to pro­vide a list­ing of con­tracts award­ed. He al­so point­ed out that in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed Gov­ern­ment agen­cies were al­so not pro­vid­ing re­quired in­for­ma­tion about con­tracts award­ed by them and that more than half of the con­tracts award­ed through state boards and statu­to­ry bod­ies were in vi­o­la­tion of the Pro­cure­ment Act.

Govt up against 2 strong women

UNC MP Dave Tan­coo al­so de­mand­ed an­swers on T&T’s 2023 ac­counts, where $2.6 bil­lion in rev­enue was at the cen­tre of the Fi­nance Min­istry’s re­cent clash­es with Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass.

Tan­coo claimed Fi­nance ini­tial­ly want­ed $3.4B added to the 2023 rev­enue fig­ures and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­fused, fol­low­ing which the $2.6B was then claimed. “The out­stand­ing 780 mil­lion dol­lars was nev­er iden­ti­fied, nev­er rec­on­ciled and seems to have van­ished. Where has this $780 mil­lion dol­lars gone?” he asked.

“This alone proves Ms Ram­dass was right not to blind­ly fol­low the min­istry and min­is­ter’s dic­tate that she should ad­just the rev­enue fig­ure.”

Tan­coo took is­sue with Cen­tral Bank’s fail­ure to al­low the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al her re­quest­ed meet­ing re­gard­ing the source of the $2.6B is­sue - Cen­tral Bank’s Elec­tron­ic Cheque Clear­ing Sys­tem and the Go Any­where plat­form.

He said the gov­er­nor’s re­fusal re­sult­ed in T&T’s ac­counts be­ing un­able to be closed be­cause $2.6B in rev­enue can­not be con­firmed.

“Com­pound­ing this com­e­dy of er­rors by the Gov­ern­ment, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter last Fri­day, while chastis­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, then said the Gov­er­nor was now will­ing to meet the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.”

Ac­cus­ing Fi­nance and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of us­ing “strong arm tac­tics” to co­erce the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to breach her fidu­cia­ry du­ties, Tan­coo added, “While these min­is­ters’ testos­terone-in­spired mis­con­duct con­tin­ues, T&T’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion con­tin­ues col­laps­ing.”

Not­ing the is­sues in the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports, Tan­coo said, “... Two ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions - iron­i­cal­ly head­ed by two strong pro­fes­sion­al women - deal­ing with the ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and in­tegri­ty of T&T’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem are high­light­ing sub­stan­tial short­com­ings with­in the Fi­nance Min­istry and re­ceipt/use of bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars.”