Judge:PNM must explain how it raised $73M for Balisier House work

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed has dis­closed her rea­sons for grant­i­ng a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der (PU­WO) against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), for it to re­veal the fi­nanc­ing for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed pro­vid­ed her writ­ten rea­sons yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to a re­quest by PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, who was served with the or­der on be­half of the par­ty along with its trustees.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Cum­mings has al­so ap­plied for the or­der to be set aside, which is yet to be con­sid­ered by Jus­tice Mo­hammed.

In the 23-page doc­u­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled she was sat­is­fied with the ar­gu­ment of ASP Ram­dath Phillip, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Le­gal Unit, who was au­tho­rised by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Guer­var­ro to make the ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the leg­is­la­tion was in­tro­duced by the PNM while in gov­ern­ment in 2019.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: “I was sat­is­fied that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the ap­pli­cant (Phillip) to rea­son­ably sus­pect that the to­tal wealth of the re­spon­dents (PNM) ex­ceeds the val­ue of their law­ful­ly ob­tained wealth.”

“I am sat­is­fied that the ap­pli­cant had a rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that the costs for the con­struc­tion of the new build­ing and the costs for ren­o­vat­ing the old build­ing were ob­tained through the com­mis­sion of one or more of­fences of bribery or cor­rup­tion,” she added.

She re­ferred to the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion, un­der which its Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans (MPs and Sen­a­tors) are re­quired to re­mit a per­cent­age of their salaries, set by the gen­er­al coun­cil, to the par­ty.

While she not­ed that the per­cent­age was ini­tial­ly sev­en and a half per cent, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley claimed the per­cent­age stood at five per cent in March this year.

Us­ing the high­er per­cent­age, the num­ber of PNM Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans be­tween 2020 and 2025 and the av­er­age salaries of the of­fi­cials, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said the par­ty would have col­lect­ed a lit­tle over $500,000 per an­num from the levy dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so re­ferred to state­ments made by Row­ley at a pub­lic meet­ing in San­gre Grande when he be­came leader in May 2010. At the time, Row­ley claimed the par­ty was in over $4 mil­lion debt. She al­so ref­er­enced Row­ley’s claims that the par­ty raised over $15 mil­lion through fundrais­ing, in­clud­ing a long-run­ning mul­ti-car raf­fle.

Deal­ing with the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the project, in­clud­ing the ren­o­va­tion of an old build­ing and con­struc­tion of a new mul­ti-storey build­ing, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that an ex­act fig­ure was not dis­closed by the par­ty, ac­cord­ing to Phillip.

Phillip re­ferred to a re­port com­mis­sioned by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al from the Unit­ed King­dom-based Berke­ley Re­search Group, which es­ti­mat­ed the to­tal cost of the new build­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $118 mil­lion and claimed the cost of con­struc­tion to date at $73 mil­lion.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so ref­er­enced Phillip’s ev­i­dence over the agreed con­struc­tion price for the new build­ing.

She not­ed that the TTPS claimed it re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from an in­for­mant that the suc­cess­ful bid­der sub­mit­ted a bid worth $68.3 mil­lion but re­duced the price to $59 mil­lion.

She ref­er­enced that Phillip claimed the com­pa­ny re­ceived lu­cra­tive con­tracts from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) be­tween 2019 and 2023, de­spite al­leged­ly not be­ing the low­est bid­der.

She point­ed to Phillip’s claims that the con­tract for Bal­isi­er House did not in­clude sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant and cost­ly el­e­ments of work, in­clud­ing the cost of steel and steel fab­ri­ca­tion, the con­struc­tion of a base­ment and work on the build­ing’s façade.

“Even if the to­tal con­struc­tion costs were lim­it­ed to $59 mil­lion payable un­der the con­tract with the con­trac­tor (which there is strong rea­son to sus­pect they were not), the PNM had no ob­vi­ous source of le­git­i­mate in­come from which to meet even those costs, and there are ques­tions that call for an ex­pla­na­tion as to how the PNM raised the mon­ey to pay for those works,” Phillip said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so ex­plained her rea­sons for grant­i­ng an ap­pli­ca­tion for PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to be served with the or­der via post rather than in per­son. She not­ed that the TTPS de­tailed the dif­fi­cul­ties it al­leged­ly had in con­tact­ing Beck­les and PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les af­ter the or­der was grant­ed on Ju­ly 10. She said she was sat­is­fied that the pro­posed al­ter­na­tive ser­vice method would be ef­fec­tive in in­form­ing them of the on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings.

Fol­low­ing re­ports on the or­der, the PNM de­nied any al­leged wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to the project.

It al­so ques­tioned how the court doc­u­ments were leaked to a me­dia house be­fore be­ing of­fi­cial­ly served and how the same me­dia house pub­lished a pho­to­graph of Cum­mings be­ing served with the doc­u­ments at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter re­turn­ing from a trip abroad.

Gon­za­les al­so set fire to an al­leged copy of the doc­u­ments while ad­dress­ing a pub­lic meet­ing last week.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Gon­za­les’ con­duct in re­la­tion to the doc­u­ments has been re­port­ed to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT).

In a let­ter sent to the as­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Aaron Ma­habir re­port­ed the in­ci­dent and called for a pub­lic state­ment rep­ri­mand­ing it, as well as con­sid­er­a­tion of dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against Gon­za­les, who is an at­tor­ney.

“Any mem­ber who be­comes the sub­ject of a com­plaint is en­ti­tled to due process and that ma­chin­ery is not mine to short-cir­cuit,” Ma­habir said.

“What I am ask­ing is that the as­so­ci­a­tion do what it has done be­fore when con­duct of this kind has arisen: use its pub­lic voice to tell the coun­try where the pro­fes­sion stands,” he added.

Ma­habir ex­plained why he was con­cerned by the con­duct and why LATT should weigh in on it.

“To burn one (court or­der) in pub­lic, while de­clar­ing that the par­ty will not be afraid of it, sends an un­mis­tak­able mes­sage. A mes­sage that a court or­der is worth ex­act­ly as much as the good­will of who­ev­er it hap­pens to be served up­on,” Ma­habir said.

He said he was trou­bled by the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fail­ure to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the con­duct.

“Si­lence, how­ev­er in­no­cent­ly ar­rived at, is eas­i­ly mis­read, par­tic­u­lar­ly where the mem­ber con­cerned holds high po­lit­i­cal of­fice, as in­dif­fer­ence, or worse, as the se­lec­tive ap­pli­ca­tion of a stan­dard that ought to ap­ply to all of us equal­ly,” Ma­habir said.

The TTPS is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by An­tho­ny Peto, KC, Thomas Cleaver and Dayadai Har­ri­paul.