PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley says the opposition United National Congress (UNC) has questions to answer about its actions in the highway extension project contract that almost cost the Government to lose millions of dollars.
He has queried why the then Government removed a safeguard that had been put in place to protect taxpayers.
On Wednesday, High Court judge Justice Frank Seepersad ruled in favor of an application by the state-owned National Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (NIDCO) to set aside the US$126.3 million arbitration awarded by an international tribunal to Brazilian construction firm Construtora OAS SA, the Contractor hired to build the highway from Golconda to Point Fortin.
In a statement issued after the ruling, Prime Minister Rowley said there had been a clause in the original contract that required that in the event of bankruptcy on the part of the Contractor, the insurance bonds securing the contract belong to the client (NIDCO).
During the execution of the works, the Contractor went bankrupt – under judicial management – in Brazil amidst widespread allegations of corruption.
“Trinidad and Tobago taxpayers must take note that on the last working day before the General Elections of 2015 (September 4th, 2015), the then Government secretly and mysteriously removed the relevant clause which protected the taxpayers’ interest in this billion-dollar project.
“The result of this removal of the bankruptcy clause in the contract is that the Contractor was allowed to leave with almost TT$1 billion (1 TT dollar=US$0.16) of taxpayers’ money. Had there not been a change of Government, this secret gift to a foreign contractor would have gone unnoticed by the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” Rowley said.
The Prime Minister said that on coming to office and discovering “this travesty,” his administration immediately took firm legal action in courts abroad to recover taxpayers’ money.
NIDCO won the matter, and TT$921 million was returned to the state company on the condition that it be used on the project.
The Contractor subsequently resorted to arbitration, and the three arbitrators from the London-based Court of International Arbitration in April ruled in their favor before the appeal that has now halted the payment.
Rowley said he had questions for the then-UNC Government.
“What was the reason for removing the clause that created this gift to a contractor? Who authorized this removal of the clause? Why have the UNC Minister of Works and the UNC Prime Minister never responded to these questions, which I have been putting to them continuously since 2015?” he queried.
The Prime Minister insisted that these questions needed to be answered.
“In matters of this nature, silence is not an appropriate option for a population to accept,” he said.
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