$3.4B HDC project exposed

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has found a $3.48 bil­lion hous­ing project was pushed for­ward de­spite ques­tions about whether con­trac­tors could se­cure the fi­nanc­ing need­ed to de­liv­er it, while a key sup­pli­er flagged as ac­tu­al­ly be­ing in­sol­vent still qual­i­fied for con­tracts.

The find­ings came from a Ju­ly 1, 2026, in­quiry re­port by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), which Guardian Me­dia has pos­ses­sion of.

For­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter and MP for Trinci­ty/Mal­oney ref­er­enced the re­port in her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion to the Low­er House on Fri­day.

Robin­son-Reg­is ac­cused the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) of putting tax­pay­ers at risk through se­ri­ous fail­ures in the pro­cure­ment of the hous­ing con­tracts.

“The peo­ple’s mon­ey is not a po­lit­i­cal war chest to be giv­en to whom they so de­sire,” Robin­son-Reg­is told Par­lia­ment.

“Pub­lic pro­cure­ment must nev­er be­come a pipeline for po­lit­i­cal favouritism.”

The re­port iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant de­fi­cien­cies in the se­lec­tion of sup­pli­ers, as­sess­ment of bids, pro­cure­ment over­sight and fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments for 11 pro­posed de­sign-build-fi­nance hous­ing pack­ages.

The OPR con­clud­ed that the pro­cure­ment process “was not con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and, con­se­quent­ly, did not give full ef­fect to the ob­jects of the Act”.

On Au­gust 16, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that OPR had re­leased a one-page state­ment on its web­site on Ju­ly 29, say­ing it found prob­lems in how the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) se­lect­ed and checked com­pa­nies for the can­celled $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing project.

But the OPR did not re­lease the full re­port, which was sent to HDC for pe­rusal.

The HDC of­fi­cial­ly can­celled its con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing pro­cure­ment pro­gramme on June 17. Robin­son-Reg­is said this is the first time the pub­lic is un­der­stand­ing why.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee, even though he spoke im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter her in the de­bate, did not re­spond to the OPR al­le­ga­tions dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

“My col­league spoke about the OPR,” he be­gan, be­fore piv­ot­ing to de­ny that the Gov­ern­ment was im­ple­ment­ing an in­her­i­tance tax.

Sup­pli­er fac­ing in­sol­ven­cy was pre-qual­i­fied with speedy Christ­mas ap­provals

Robin­son-Reg­is said the re­port, ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, doc­u­ment­ed fail­ures in due dili­gence and con­trac­tor qual­i­fi­ca­tion, in­clud­ing the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion of a sup­pli­er whose com­pa­ny pro­file in­di­cat­ed it was in­sol­vent, in re­ceiver­ship or fac­ing wind­ing-up pro­ceed­ings.

“Notwith­stand­ing this, and the re­quire­ments of Sec­tion 29 (1) (d) of the Act, said com­pa­ny was pre-qual­i­fied and in­clud­ed in the pool of sup­pli­ers in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate,” the OPR re­port stat­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is told the House that 30 pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion ap­provals were grant­ed on the same day sup­pli­ers ap­plied, while six re­quests were ap­proved with­in one to three days while 12 were processed with­in four to six days.

Ten of those 12 ap­provals oc­curred dur­ing the Christ­mas and New Year pe­ri­od.

She ques­tioned whether the HDC had ad­e­quate­ly as­sessed the fi­nan­cial stand­ing and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty of com­pa­nies be­ing con­sid­ered for con­tracts rang­ing from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $112 mil­lion to $1.3 bil­lion.

The OPR found that some sup­pli­er records lacked au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments or suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence of tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty for projects val­ued above $100 mil­lion. It al­so found no ev­i­dence that HDC of­fi­cials sought ad­di­tion­al clar­i­fi­ca­tion to con­firm the com­plete­ness and ac­cu­ra­cy of sup­pli­ers’ in­for­ma­tion be­fore grant­i­ng pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so cit­ed con­cerns about over­sight and pos­si­ble con­flicts of in­ter­est, in­clud­ing the re­port’s ref­er­ence to com­pa­nies shar­ing per­son­nel.

She sug­gest­ed that the cir­cum­stances raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bid-rig­ging.

The OPR al­so ques­tioned the HDC’s as­ser­tion that the fi­nanc­ing mod­el would avoid de­mands on the Trea­sury be­cause com­plet­ed hous­es would be sold through mort­gages arranged by lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The HDC had told the reg­u­la­tor that con­trac­tors would be paid pri­mar­i­ly from pro­ceeds gen­er­at­ed by the sale of com­plet­ed hous­ing units.

How­ev­er, the OPR found that those pro­ceeds con­sti­tut­ed pub­lic mon­ey un­der the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and that the HDC had com­mit­ted to a project worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.48 bil­lion with­out guar­an­teed fund­ing.

The re­port warned that this could ex­pose the HDC and tax­pay­ers to ad­di­tion­al li­a­bil­i­ties and erode val­ue for mon­ey.

It al­so found that a pro­posed mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween the HDC and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank to fa­cil­i­tate mort­gage pro­cess­ing and pay­ments did not ap­pear to ex­ist. The HDC said the arrange­ment had in­stead been re­placed by a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the bank.

The re­port al­so iden­ti­fied con­cerns about the as­sess­ment of bid­ders’ fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the re­quest for pro­pos­als re­quired bid­ders to demon­strate a min­i­mum $100 mil­lion line of cred­it, but eight of 10 let­ters from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions con­tained dis­claimers in­di­cat­ing that the fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments were non-bind­ing.

She said the af­fect­ed bid­ders were nev­er­the­less al­lowed to pro­ceed.

The OPR al­so found that the HDC had not es­tab­lished eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria, a scor­ing method­ol­o­gy or min­i­mum thresh­olds for as­sess­ing fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty, de­spite re­quir­ing three years of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

The reg­u­la­tor said there was no ev­i­dence that those state­ments had been ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine whether bid­ders could sus­tain the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the projects.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ques­tioned the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion process, say­ing the re­quest for pro­pos­als re­quired bid­ders to score at least 75 points and not fail any sub-at­tribute, but no pass­ing score had been de­fined for the sub-at­trib­ut­es.

She point­ed to one case in which a bid­der’s tech­ni­cal score rose from 36.93 to 76.03 fol­low­ing a re-eval­u­a­tion. The com­pa­ny that was tech­ni­cal­ly non-com­pli­ant was then rec­om­mend­ed for an award.

The OPR found that the re­vised eval­u­a­tion re­port did not ad­e­quate­ly ex­plain the dif­fer­ences be­tween the orig­i­nal and re­vised scores.

The reg­u­la­tor al­so raised con­cerns about the speed of the as­sess­ments. All 41 sub­mis­sions across the 11 pack­ages were eval­u­at­ed be­tween March 23 and April 1, 2026, with all 11 eval­u­a­tion re­ports signed on April 1.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the OPR ob­served that the HDC had ad­hered on­ly to the min­i­mum time frame pre­scribed for lim­it­ed bid­ding, adding that bid­ders were not grant­ed ex­tra time to pre­pare their sub­mis­sions.

“It is clear that with $3.4 bil­lion at stake, the HDC was play­ing fast and loose with pub­lic mon­ey,” she said.

The reg­u­la­tor raised fur­ther con­cerns about the se­cu­ri­ty of bid sub­mis­sions, the ad­e­qua­cy of pro­cure­ment over­sight and whether con­tracts award­ed be­tween April 2023 and 2026 had been ful­ly re­port­ed to the OPR.

Robin­son-Reg­is linked the find­ings to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed changes to pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that weak­en­ing over­sight would leave tax­pay­ers more ex­posed.

“When the reg­u­lar reg­u­la­tor, which is the OPR, doc­u­ments this many fail­ures in a $3.4 bil­lion ex­er­cise, weak­en­ing over­sight is not pro­tect­ing tax­pay­ers. It is putting tax­pay­ers at risk,” she said.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hypocrisy, re­call­ing that mem­bers of the ad­min­is­tra­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly called for stronger pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion.

The OPR, in its con­clu­sion, called on the HDC to take cor­rec­tive, re­me­di­al and com­pli­ance-re­lat­ed ac­tion and en­sure that fu­ture pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings com­ply with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, its reg­u­la­tions and ap­plic­a­ble guide­lines.

Since the pub­li­ca­tion of the OPR re­port, the Gov­ern­ment has made leg­isla­tive changes that cur­tailed the reg­u­la­tor’s pow­ers, mak­ing its rec­om­men­da­tions fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion ex­plic­it­ly ad­vi­so­ry and non-bind­ing.

Un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Act, 2026, the OPR is pro­hib­it­ed from sus­pend­ing pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings or con­tracts, or­der­ing bids to be re-eval­u­at­ed, over­turn­ing con­tract awards or di­rect­ing that an­oth­er sup­pli­er re­ceive a con­tract fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.