Minister queries Airports Authority’s $205M debt write-off to CAL

Even as the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) strug­gles to pay out­stand­ing wages and pay­ments owed to em­ploy­ees, it has writ­ten off a $205 mil­lion debt owed by Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).

Rais­ing the is­sue dur­ing Mon­day night’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) (Fi­nan­cial Year 2025) Bill, Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our said de­spite this debt write-off, the au­thor­i­ty is now seek­ing a $45 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to meet re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

These funds are need­ed to set­tle ar­rears fol­low­ing re­cent wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion, which would ben­e­fit 444 cur­rent and for­mer em­ploy­ees.

How­ev­er, Za­k­our not­ed that the AATT can­not meet these oblig­a­tions from its own ac­count, due in large part to the write-off of the mas­sive CAL debt.

“The same Caribbean Air­lines, the pre­vi­ous, pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter of Fi­nance speaks so high­ly about. In my view, this was reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble, not to men­tion the $300 mil­lion dol­lars to ac­quire lands in To­ba­go for the new air­port even though State lands were al­ready avail­able near­by, rais­ing red flag about who re­al­ly ben­e­fit­ted,” Za­k­our said.

He claimed to have re­viewed a list of prop­er­ty own­ers in­volved in the To­ba­go land ac­qui­si­tion, stat­ing, “There are fa­mil­iar names.”

Za­k­our al­so al­leged that mil­lions of dol­lars were award­ed with­out any ten­der­ing, in­clud­ing for pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to Za­k­our, the pre­vi­ous board had planned to pri­va­tise all air­port se­cu­ri­ty and had even ad­ver­tised ten­ders. How­ev­er, in­stead of award­ing a com­pre­hen­sive con­tract, the board al­leged­ly opt­ed to is­sue small­er con­tracts for spe­cif­ic ar­eas, in what Za­k­our de­scribed as a back­door ap­proach.

“But mul­ti­ple ten­ders for se­lect­ed ar­eas even­tu­al­ly, you would se­lect the whole air­port.”

He said the let­ters of ac­cep­tance for those ten­ders were dat­ed April 22, 2025, just one week be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Cor­rup­tion probe at VM­COTT

Za­k­our al­so raised alarm over al­le­ga­tions of gross mis­man­age­ment, cor­rup­tion, and im­prop­er pro­cure­ment at the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (VM­COTT), even ac­cus­ing a for­mer chair­man of us­ing State re­sources to sell pies for his sis­ter’s busi­ness.

Za­k­our cit­ed a let­ter dat­ed April 10, 2023, ad­dressed to for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and copied to sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing for­mer Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Sonya Fran­cis-Year­wood, for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, and DPP Roger Gas­pard. The let­ter called for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion and an in­de­pen­dent au­dit in­to VM­COTT.

He said the re­port out­lined cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of State funds and mul­ti­ple pro­cure­ment breach­es.

It al­leged that thou­sands were spent at PriceS­mart on al­co­hol, while an ex­ec­u­tive’s sis­ter be­came the sole sup­pli­er of food for all com­pa­ny events with­out a three-quote sys­tem in place.

“This let­ter, let me re­mind you, was sent to the prime min­is­ter at the time of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad & To­ba­go,” Za­k­our said.

He said de­spite vir­tu­al board meet­ings, VM­COTT al­leged­ly spent thou­sands on month­ly cater­ing, which was de­liv­ered to and re­moved from the com­pound.

Za­k­our said the Gov­ern­ment was asked to in­ves­ti­gate claims that an ex­ec­u­tive lived at the VM­COTT com­pound.

He out­lined fur­ther fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment: un­paid VAT, mil­lions owed to NIB, BIR, WASA, T&TEC and oth­er cred­i­tors, and a $500,000 ve­hi­cle re­quest by the CEO de­spite the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial strain. He al­so not­ed an $80,000 ve­hi­cle re­pair for a friend of an ex­ec­u­tive, for which VM­COTT nev­er re­couped the funds.

In an­oth­er case, the TTPS al­leged­ly over­paid VM­COTT by $17 mil­lion, which the com­pa­ny could not ac­count for. Za­k­our said $4 mil­lion worth of un­used parts were nev­er liq­ui­dat­ed—in­stead, $50,000 was spent on stor­age con­tain­ers to house them.

“Mr Speak­er, the list goes on and on re­gard­ing the cor­rup­tion I have seen in VM­COTT.”

Za­k­our added that VM­COTT is re­spon­si­ble for cer­ti­fy­ing pri­vate garages used by the TTPS, yet 18 garages ap­proved in 2022 were nev­er for­mal­ly cer­ti­fied. Still, po­lice ve­hi­cles were sent to these garages with­out prop­er over­sight.

“I’ll give you one ex­am­ple. One par­tic­u­lar garage charged $20,000 for a ser­vice which would have on­ly cost $7,000 at VM­COTT. In the last decade, $368 mil­lion was spent main­tain­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles. I am sure, based on what I have in front of me, tens of mil­lions of dol­lars have been wast­ed in the last decade.”

Re­spond­ing to ear­li­er ques­tions from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray on how the Gov­ern­ment would fund new ini­tia­tives, Za­k­our said elim­i­nat­ing cor­rup­tion was the first step.