Shal­iza Has­sanali

Deputy chair­man of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) Stephen Broad­bridge claims he was asked to sign cheques to­talling "well over $50 mil­lion worth of vari­a­tions," way in ex­cess of the nor­mal fi­nan­cial lim­it. These vari­a­tions had not gone to the board for ap­proval.

His re­fusal to en­dorse the cheques took place on Ju­ly 12, at the com­pa­ny's Val­sayn of­fice, and was re­vealed in an e-mail sent by Broad­bridge to nine di­rec­tors of the EM­BD on Ju­ly 19. Broad­bridge said he un­der­stands that the vari­a­tion must not ex­ceed ten per cent of the job cost or $100,000, with­out go­ing back to the ten­ders com­mit­tee.

"These vari­a­tions had not gone to the board as far as I know. There was no sup­port­ing pa­per­work and I could not sign," he wrote. Broad­bridge re­vealed some of the cheques had been signed by one di­rec­tor who he named. Broad­bridge said as far as he was con­cerned, the di­rec­tors have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for events that may oc­cur.

Broad­bridge said he al­so un­der­stands that there was some con­fu­sion with him be­ing ap­point­ed as deputy chair­man of the EM­BD. "A lit­tle-girl ru­mour was cir­cu­lat­ed that I was in­stalled by COP be­cause the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship was giv­ing the COP to­ken posts. This, I as­sure you, is not the case. I was se­lect­ed by the UNC."

The e-mail was sent days af­ter an ex­pos&ea­cute; of the EM­BD's land-rental fi­as­co in last Sun­day Guardian led to three of its di­rec­tors ten­der­ing their res­ig­na­tion. Min­utes from a spe­cial Ju­ly 17 meet­ing, at­tend­ed by five di­rec­tors, its deputy chair­man, cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and one di­rec­tor via tele­phone, showed that the in­come gen­er­at­ed from the rental was dis­closed for the first time by its CEO at its June meet­ing. "He (CEO) was, how­ev­er, un­able to pro­vide any ra­tio­nale for the amount of rent that was charged."

Di­rec­tors un­aware of agree­ments

'With re­gard to res­i­den­tial sites, the di­rec­tors ex­plained that the CEO's Ju­ly re­port to the board con­tained sur­pris­ing in­for­ma­tion that sup­ple­men­tary agree­ments were drawn up for four sites: Pe­tit Morne II and III, Cedar Hill II and Roops­ingh Road II. "The di­rec­tors fur­ther not­ed that they were un­aware of these agree­ments."

They felt it was clear that the CEO had ex­ceed­ed his au­thor­i­ty. "Even more trou­bling was the ab­sence of the re­vised costs in his re­port. Men­tion was made on­ly of ad­just­ed rates and quan­ti­ties," the min­utes stat­ed. The board moved a res­o­lu­tion that hav­ing a nor­mal work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the CEO had be­come com­plete­ly un­hinged by what they felt was "his con­tin­u­ous dis­re­gard for straight­for­ward rules and reg­u­la­tions."

Broad­bridge had threat­ened to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion last week, but af­ter the in­ter­ven­tion of Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal had a change of heart. He said he was com­fort­able that Mooni­lal got in­volved. "I am con­fi­dent that he will steer the ship cor­rect­ly. We are there to keep an eye on things...to en­sure that this state com­pa­ny per­forms and tax­pay­ers get val­ue for their mon­ey."

Broad­bridge said there was no such thing as any to­ken ap­point­ment. "Some­body told me that was said. The per­son who told me that may not or may have been speak­ing the truth. I was ac­tu­al­ly in­stalled there by the UNC. I was not se­lect­ed for favour. I did not do­nate any mon­ey or any­thing like that."

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said he could not com­ment on EM­BD's mat­ters and sug­gest­ed that we di­rect ques­tions to Mooni­lal. Chair­man of the EM­BD Kris­ten­dath Joe Ramkissoon in re­sponse to Broad­bridge's claims said, "I don't know any­thing about that. I am not pre­pared to dis­cuss any mat­ter fur­ther."