Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

(with re­port­ing by Shal­iza Has­sanali, Clay­ton Clarke, Rishard Khan)

Keon Warn­er, son of To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, has ad­mit­ted that Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd (WC­SL) made a ver­bal re­quest for $60 mil­lion from Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine for out­stand­ing pay­ments from con­struc­tion projects.

Warn­er al­so ad­mit­ted their com­pa­ny had been fac­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues, and they made the re­quest for the mil­lions owed through Au­gus­tine, who, on his own ac­cord, went to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for help.

Last Fri­day, at a press brief­ing, Au­gus­tine al­leged the leak of a tape which is now un­der po­lice probe, was part of an ex­tor­tion plot to get the THA to pay mon­ey to Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd.

Au­gus­tine said that the com­pa­ny had been paid $25.2 mil­lion by his ad­min­is­tra­tion for a se­ries of projects, some of which had ques­tions about them.

Au­gus­tine has al­leged that the $100 mil­lion was sent to To­ba­go “be­cause two se­nior mem­bers” of the Gov­ern­ment called “and asked that I find a way to give Warn­er’s $60 mil­lion out of the $100 mil­lion.”

“Of the $100 mil­lion that was sent, it is be­lieved that one con­trac­tor must re­ceive $60 mil­lion of it, while the THA at the same time is bat­tling a court case for $80 mil­lion for a road built while I was still in school.

“I am cer­tain if I check care­ful­ly no oth­er con­trac­tor in the To­ba­go space, no oth­er con­trac­tor that op­er­at­ed in the To­ba­go space, even if they came here from Trinidad, has re­ceived any pay­ment close to $25.2 mil­lion,” Far­ley said on Fri­day. But Warn­er charged, “He (Au­gus­tine) brought that on his own. He came back and said the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment agreed to send $100 mil­lion on the premise that he pays the out­stand­ing debt in the THA.”

Warn­ers in the spot­light

For the past two years, the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies Lim­it­ed has been in the spot­light.

The main rea­son is that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is per­son­al friends with its chief ex­ec­u­tive, Al­lan Warn­er.

It’s be­cause of this re­la­tion­ship that Warn­er, a To­ba­go-based con­trac­tor, has had all the projects and work he has re­ceived scru­ti­nised by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to de­ter­mine whether Warn­er has ben­e­fit­ed from Row­ley’s po­si­tion as PM.

On Fri­day, Au­gus­tine showed what ap­peared to be screen­shots of a What­sApp ex­change with Warn­er’s son Keon Warn­er.

Al­lan, whose com­pa­ny has been a con­trac­tor with the THA since 1998, told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that his son was the spokesman on this mat­ter.

In re­sponse, Warn­er told the Guardian that a meet­ing took place yes­ter­day to dis­cuss le­gal ac­tion against Au­gus­tine and he is "go­ing all the way with this” mat­ter.

The chief sec­re­tary has al­leged that WC­SL pro­ceed­ed to em­ploy sev­er­al strate­gies to get him to pay the mon­ey, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing to leak the clip to “scare” him in­to “tak­ing State funds and throw­ing it his way.”

He said the con­trac­tor took the THA to court for $47.7 mil­lion in claims for road resur­fac­ing and in­fra­struc­ture projects. For his part, Au­gus­tine said the THA had been “noth­ing but fair” in its pay­ment process.

Warner’s Hardware, Scarborough, Tobago.

CLAYTON CLARKE

Keon Warn­er de­fends work

Mean­while, Warn­er told the Sun­day Guardian that his road projects were done above board and that his com­pa­ny is not in­volved in any cor­rup­tion or black­mail­ing.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tion, Warn­er de­fend­ed his com­pa­ny and his name, stat­ing that “every­thing in To­ba­go, so far, was done above board.”

“I am not go­ing to ease him up at all. Where he claimed that we got paid for work that we nev­er did that is crazy. I have all my pa­per­work … I have all my doc­u­ments. I am go­ing all the way with this,” he said.

Warn­er said his bank ac­count would re­flect the work he de­liv­ered and what was paid to him, in­sist­ing that Au­gus­tine has been grasp­ing at straws to dis­tract and save him­self from his life­long mis­deeds.

“The voice record­ing has been ex­posed and I’m def­i­nite­ly not the one that record­ed and ex­posed it.”

Warn­er de­scribed Au­gus­tine’s al­le­ga­tion of a black­mail cam­paign as “crazy talk.”

Ad­mit­ting that both he and his fa­ther are PNM mem­bers, he said he was asked to sup­port the PDP but he turned them down.

Af­ter 18 months, Warn­er said no con­trac­tor has seen any cor­re­spon­dence of an au­dit “to sug­gest that there was any wrong­do­ing.”

“If WC­SL is viewed as cor­rupt, how come the THA paid the com­pa­ny?” he asked.

Hav­ing re­ceived $32.2 mil­lion in pay­ment from the THA so far, Warn­er said WC­SL was still owed WC­SL $47 mil­lion for projects de­liv­ered in 2021.

Warn­er said WC­SL took loans to un­der­take the projects.

“The work was done and it is very sick­en­ing to see there is a po­lit­i­cal change and some­body is now com­ing to say to you, nah you are not get­ting paid. That is mad­ness.”

Faced with a fi­nan­cial bind, Warn­er said they had to send home 300 work­ers while he owes the banks.

“My hard­ware is now closed due to lack of pay­ments. All we got from Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his team are slaps in the face. Is a kind of vin­dic­tive slap in the face.” Warn­er said about 14 roads were al­so left un­done due to the lack of pay­ments which he wrote the THA about but got no re­sponse.

PM on Warn­er in 2022

In Oc­to­ber 2022,  at his con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at the Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Dr Row­ley ac­cused the THA of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against To­ba­go con­trac­tors for projects on the is­land. Dr Row­ley said there was pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for Trinidad con­trac­tors over their To­ba­go coun­ter­parts.

“To­ba­go got $300 mil­lion from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. They gave every cent of it to con­trac­tors in Trinidad.

“The mon­ey came in­to To­ba­go, THA writes the cheques to the con­trac­tors, and that mon­ey is com­ing back to Trinidad be­cause they don’t like the To­ba­go con­trac­tors be­cause they are PNM.

“You hear them talk­ing about (Al­lan) Warn­er (To­ba­go con­trac­tor). You know why they call­ing Warn­er’s name?

“It’s be­cause they are in busi­ness in To­ba­go. Would you be­lieve that?” Dr Row­ley said at the time.

“To­ba­go peo­ple, in­stead of be­ing proud they gen­er­at­ed two or three con­trac­tors who could at least com­pete and do the work in To­ba­go, they joined the UNC and called peo­ple names in stu­pid­ness.

“But what is hap­pen­ing in the mean­time is, the de­vel­op­ment ends up in the hands of con­trac­tors in south and cen­tral Trinidad. So it is im­por­tant what hap­pens in elec­tions.”

Row­ley de­fend­ed him­self in 2021

Row­ley, de­fend­ing him­self on the pur­chase of a prop­er­ty in To­ba­go at a me­dia con­fer­ence in 2021, re­vealed that Al­lan had been a busi­ness part­ner re­gard­ing a To­ba­go farm that start­ed in 2008 when Row­ley was a PNM back­bencher.

In one in­stance, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ques­tioned: “Prime Min­is­ter, are you aware in the pub­lic con­struc­tion of the ter­mi­nal at the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, In­ez In­vest­ment of your friend Al­lan Warn­er is in­volved in the con­struc­tion with sub­con­tracts and are you aware of that?”

Dr Row­ley then re­spond­ed, “Every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go is my friend in­clud­ing Al­lan Warn­er.” Dr Row­ley then an­swered: “But I am not aware that Al­lan Warn­er is in­volved in this project at Crown Point.”

For his part, Dr Row­ley has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions as part of the UNC’s elec­tion-time “play­book” of char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion.

In 2021, Dr Row­ley was wrong­ly ac­cused by MP Sad­dam Ho­sein of not de­clar­ing a $1.2 mil­lion in­vest­ment prop­er­ty he owned in To­ba­go to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC).

The prop­er­ty was built by In­ez In­vest­ments, whose prin­ci­pal is Warn­er.

Dr Row­ley had said that the IC’s Page 9 Form, which list­ed all prop­er­ties owned by him and his wife and one shared by his chil­dren, in­volved six prop­er­ties.

The first was Good­wood Park (1985) and the most re­cent was the Shir­van In­ez De­vel­op­ment.

“Date of ac­qui­si­tion—Feb­ru­ary 22, 2019. Orig­i­nal cost—$1.2 mil­lion. Es­ti­mat­ed val­ue at De­cem­ber 2019—$1.2 mil­lion,” he had told the me­dia.

He had said the source of funds for the pur­chase of his To­ba­go town­house was his and his wife’s sav­ings and they were among the first pur­chasers when draw­ings were avail­able and ap­proved.

He said his wife had been work­ing for umpteen decades and was about to re­tire and he had nev­er been un­em­ployed since uni­ver­si­ty.

The PM said he had com­plied with the law, paid a pur­chase price the ven­dor agreed on and ne­go­ti­at­ed no “dis­count”.

Row­ley told the me­dia that he did not hide that Al­lan Warn­er was his busi­ness part­ner.

He had not­ed that the PM’s To­ba­go res­i­dence was built by Parks and to his knowl­edge, Warn­er’s firm on­ly paved the dri­ve­way.

Keon Warn­er said that his dad was a close as­so­ciate of Dr Row­ley.

“My fa­ther has known Dr Row­ley … I think they went to school to­geth­er. I’m not sure if it is pri­ma­ry or high school. I don’t know the full his­to­ry.

“Yes, it is known that my fa­ther and Dr Row­ley, I would not say they are close … but they are as­so­ciates. To say that there is a spe­cial friend­ship there is just old talk. That is far from the truth.”

As busi­ness peo­ple, Warn­er said, they ten­der for jobs in T&T.

“There is no friend­ship to say that some­body is favour­ing us. We work hard.”