Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj has writ­ten to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion about a board mem­ber of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) who has al­leged­ly award­ed con­tracts to his own com­pa­nies. Ma­haraj made the rev­e­la­tion yes­ter­day dur­ing an in­ter­view with the me­dia fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween sev­er­al Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL), and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, at CAL's head of­fice in Pi­ar­co.

Oth­er par­ties in­clud­ed in the MOU are Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny Ltd, Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Ltd and the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty. The core ob­jec­tive of the MoU is to en­hance the sup­ply of train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion avail­able to those in the avi­a­tion sec­tor.

Ma­haraj said: "It was brought to my at­ten­tion that this par­tic­u­lar board mem­ber at the AATT, with two oth­er mem­bers and the chair­man, de­lib­er­at­ed up­on a hu­man re­source con­tract in one of its meet­ing, re­gard­ing the Air Ja­maica and CAL merg­er, where­by the said board mem­ber re­ceived three con­tracts."

He said the con­tracts, which were award­ed from 2006 on­wards at a cost of $4 mil­lion, were giv­en to the board mem­ber in his name and two oth­er com­pa­nies that he owns. The three com­pa­nies were con­tract­ed to con­duct hu­man re­sources con­sul­tan­cy and le­gal ser­vices for the merged air­lines.

"Based on the facts be­fore me, I did not see a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­ter­est nor did the board mem­ber re­cuse him­self from the de­lib­er­a­tion. As far as I have read in the min­utes and based on the in­for­ma­tion, I felt that my le­gal team had suf­fi­cient grounds to re­fer the mat­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for con­sid­er­a­tion," Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj ex­plained this was a breach of Sec­tions 23 and 24 of the In­tegri­ty and Pub­lic Life Act which call on per­sons to be "fair and im­par­tial in the ex­er­cise of their du­ties." Asked if this type of cor­rup­tion could be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to CAL's cur­rent debt, Ma­haraj said, "I have to ex­am­ine not on­ly this con­tract, but check oth­er con­tracts to see which mem­bers may have been giv­ing them­selves and oth­er com­pa­nies that might be bo­gus or they might be di­rec­tors of."

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said he was will­ing to apol­o­gise if he was wrong. "What ap­pears to be the act of im­pro­pri­ety sends flags in my mind and I say let the Com­mis­sion have a look at it, to see if any breach­es oc­curred, if not, we apol­o­gise for any in­con­ve­nience, " he said.

Ma­haraj dis­missed re­ports in a week­ly news­pa­per about cur­rent CAL chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan award­ing him­self an Au­di Q7 as part of his pack­age. "Moo­nan in­di­cat­ed to me that he nev­er asked for Q8 or Q 9/10 or noth­ing of the sort, not even a Q6."

Dur­ing his speech pri­or to the sign­ing of the MoU, Ma­haraj said his min­istry was mov­ing away from cor­rupt prac­tices like this and em­bark­ing on pos­i­tive ini­tia­tives, such as avi­a­tion stud­ies for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. He said, "Un­der the past ad­min­is­tra­tion, an un­col­lect­ed debt at the AATT over ten years was left un­at­tend­ed.

"Mean­while, a CAL chair­man was us­ing a pri­vate jet to fly to ar­eas where CAL op­er­ates for com­pa­ny busi­ness where he charged CAL a fee of US$6,000 per trip-a grand to­tal of US$28,000. "Why this hap­pened when one can jump on a first-class flight on CAL to go to Ja­maica? Look how far we have come from these back­room deals, where we are now fo­cus­ing on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment."

Arthur Lok Jack's re­sponse

For­mer CAL chair­man Arthur Lok Jack says he has no prob­lem ad­mit­ting he used a pri­vate jet to con­duct busi­ness on be­half of CAL. Speak­ing to CNC3 yes­ter­day, LoK Jack said he used a pri­vate jet on five oc­ca­sions to trav­el to Ja­maica to at­tend to ur­gent mat­ters.

He said the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Air Ja­maica ac­qui­si­tion were break­ing down and he need­ed to trav­el to Ja­maica im­me­di­ate­ly to in­ter­vene. He said the jet was used at an ap­prox­i­mate cost of US$5,000 re­turn. On many oc­ca­sions, Lok Jack said, he trav­elled with ex­ec­u­tives, which meant the cost was then much dif­fer­ent from a com­mer­cial flight.

He said it was more than worth it, con­sid­er­ing the ur­gency of the is­sues which need­ed to be re­solved in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. The charges, he said, were on­ly for fu­el, land­ing fees and cater­ing.

Mean­while, Lok Jack told the T&T Guardian the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion should stop clutch­ing at straws and fo­cus on CAL's route sys­tem to try and stop the haem­or­rhag­ing of cash.