Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) lawyers will be writ­ing a for­mal com­plaint to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s White-col­lar Crime Unit re­quest­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the En­er­gy Min­istry’s grant­i­ng of a min­ing li­cence to busi­ness­man Keon Warn­er in 13 days.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed this at the par­ty’s Mon­day night meet­ing at the par­ty’s Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters.

Say­ing an­oth­er of the Prime Min­is­ter’s “best friends” is in trou­ble, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cit­ed news­pa­per re­ports that the High Court had frozen two com­pa­nies of busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er’s group in a quar­ry­ing probe.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the re­port stat­ed that even as Warn­er was be­fore the court on a crim­i­nal charge, the En­er­gy Min­istry grant­ed the Warn­er fam­i­ly a tem­po­rary min­ing op­er­at­ing li­cence on June 18. The ap­pli­ca­tion for the li­cence was re­port­ed­ly made on June 5, she said, more than a month af­ter the po­lice shut down the min­ing plant.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned how the min­ing li­cence was grant­ed in 13 days.

“Did a high of­fi­cial mes­sage some­one to grant this li­cence? This min­ing li­cence ap­proval reeks of cor­rup­tion. I’ve in­struct­ed our lawyers to file a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest for doc­u­men­ta­tion and find out the process un­der­tak­en to grant this li­cence in 13 days,” she said.

“I’ve al­so in­struct­ed our lawyers to write a for­mal com­plaint to the DPP and the white-col­lar crime unit of the TTPS re­quest­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the grant­i­ng of this li­cence.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal had al­so ques­tioned if the dredg­ing of the Sea Lots Basin was done to ben­e­fit Al­lan Warn­er.

“Af­ter 15 years, the En­er­gy Min­istry sud­den­ly de­cid­ed to dredge that area. ... I’ve in­struct­ed our lawyers to file a FOIA on the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion re­quest­ing doc­u­ments for this dredg­ing, in­clud­ing the costs and the ba­thy­met­ric sur­veys of the seabed in the Sea Lots Basin be­fore and af­ter the dredg­ing ...”

Young: Sea Lots dredg­ing a com­plete­ly false nar­ra­tive

In a re­sponse on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim was one of the most “rep­re­hen­si­ble at­tacks” on the Warn­er fam­i­ly.

He said it was a “false nar­ra­tive” that the Gov­ern­ment dredged the chan­nel to some­how fa­cil­i­tate Mr Warn­er and/or his busi­ness­es in Sea Lots.

“Such at­tacks are defam­a­to­ry and vile,” he said.

“The facts are that it was the UNC gov­ern­ment in 2014, via Cab­i­net Minute 1597 dat­ed June 5, 2014, that agreed that the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs (as it then was), en­ter in­to a con­tract with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) for the pro­cure­ment of a con­trac­tor to un­der­take the dredg­ing of the Sea Lots Main Chan­nel and Turn­ing Basin (the chan­nel).

“This work was nec­es­sary since 2014, as fail­ure to dredge the chan­nel had re­sult­ed in a re­duc­tion of the max­i­mum al­low­able draft of loaded ves­sels and in­creased op­er­a­tional costs due to high­er freight cost as­so­ci­at­ed with small­er loads.

“Sev­en­ty-five per cent (75 per cent) of Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny’s (NPMC) fu­el de­mand is fa­cil­i­tat­ed out of its Sea Lots ter­mi­nal. A dis­con­tin­u­a­tion in sup­ply to Sea Lots for any rea­son will re­sult in a short­fall of fu­el in North and Cen­tral Trinidad and in To­ba­go.”