It is now close to 21 years since the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port project has been com­plet­ed and around 19 years since a sub­se­quent Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (COE) in­to the air­port project end­ed.

The COE in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project was ap­point­ed by for­mer pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son in April 2002 fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of ma­jor cor­rup­tion and fraud. Af­ter an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od and 167 pub­lic hear­ings head­ed by COE chair­man Clin­ton Bernard, SC–and in­clud­ing com­mis­sion­ers Marie Ange Knights, an ac­coun­tant; Pe­ter By­noe, an ar­chi­tect; Kei­th Sir­ju, an en­gi­neer; and Vic­tor Hart, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or and project man­ag­er–the re­port was hand­ed in.

The fi­nal re­port was de­liv­ered to for­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards on Au­gust 31, 2003.

To this day, how­ev­er, de­spite past es­ti­ma­tions in Par­lia­ment that the COE cost tax­pay­ers $10 mil­lion (ex­clud­ing le­gal fees), the find­ings of the COE are yet to be pub­lished.

With two new de­vel­op­ments in re­cent weeks–At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour be­ing dis­qual­i­fied from rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try in a mul­ti-mil­lion civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case, and the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing last week that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries in­to the four sets of fraud charges re­lat­ed to the air­port project must restart–the con­tro­ver­sial project is back on the lips of many.

In the eyes of many, jus­tice, in what is re­gard­ed as the coun­try’s most fa­mous cor­rup­tion case, is yet to be served.'

Clinton Bernard, SC

As de­fined by the on­line le­gal en­cy­clo­pe­dia Lex­ol­o­gy, a COE is a tool that en­ables the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of mat­ters of pub­lic con­cern in a pub­lic fo­rum oth­er than in just an or­di­nary court. They are in­tend­ed to en­cour­age trans­paren­cy through fact-find­ing and pro­vid­ing in­put for fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tions or crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings if need­ed.

Hart, one of the COE mem­bers, be­lieves that the Bernard Re­port ought to have been pub­lished with­in a rea­son­able time af­ter it was de­liv­ered to the then-pres­i­dent and then-prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and the then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

"The re­port should have been pub­lished be­cause it was the re­sult of an in­de­pen­dent en­quiry in­to the ac­tions of a group of na­tion­als and for­eign­ers that were al­leged to have robbed tax­pay­ers of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on the Pi­ar­co Air­port con­struc­tion project.

"Al­so, the $10 mil­lion cost of the COE was paid for by the tax­pay­ers who had a right to see and know the re­port’s find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions as to avoid a re­cur­rence," Hart said in an ex­change with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day.

"Fur­ther, the pub­lished re­port would have as­sist­ed the coun­try's le­gal au­thor­i­ties in prob­ing the events in­ves­ti­gat­ed, to de­ter­mine if there was a need to bring le­gal charges to hold some or all of the ac­cused ac­count­able for their ac­tions and to re­cov­er some or all of the mon­ey that was al­leged­ly mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed."

Victor Hart

KERWIN PIERRE

'T&T has not learned any lessons from en­quiry '

Ac­cord­ing to Hart, if the re­port was pub­lished and the rec­om­men­da­tions im­ple­ment­ed, the coun­try would have been spared, at least in part, an­oth­er $26 mil­lion spent in con­duct­ing the sub­se­quent Uff En­quiry (COE in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor) that re-in­ves­ti­gat­ed some of the mat­ters dealt with by the Pi­ar­co air­port COE.

He said the con­tin­u­ing pat­tern of the Gov­ern­ment or­der­ing CO­Es at a great ex­pense, and then not pub­lish­ing the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion has to stop.

"To­day, 19 years af­ter the de­liv­ery of the re­port to the Gov­ern­ment, jus­tice can­not be said to have been served be­cause none of the court cas­es brought by the State against the ac­cused has been com­plet­ed. There­fore, no penal­ties have been im­posed, whether in­car­cer­a­tion or pay­ment of dam­ages on any of the lo­cals ac­cused," he said.

"In my opin­ion, the coun­try has not learned any lessons from the Pi­ar­co Com­mis­sion of En­quiry be­cause, in the ab­sence of the pub­li­ca­tion of the Bernard Re­port, there has been no op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pow­ers that be and the gen­er­al pub­lic to study the re­port’s find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions and im­ple­ment the ap­pro­pri­ate rec­om­men­da­tions."

For ex­am­ple, he said, the rec­om­men­da­tions sug­gest­ed that NIPDEC be re­formed af­ter the COE found that NIPDEC’s man­age­ment of the project con­tributed to some of the prob­lems.

How­ev­er, the rec­om­men­da­tion nev­er saw the light of day, he said, re­sult­ing in him "watch­ing with alarm" as he saw "sim­i­lar cost­ly prob­lems tak­ing place dur­ing NIPDEC's Project Man­age­ment of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal con­struc­tion project in To­ba­go."    

Last week, one of the ac­cused in the Pi­ar­co cor­rup­tion mat­ter, prin­ci­pal of North­ern Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh was re­port­ed by an­oth­er news­pa­per as say­ing that he be­lieved a new COE in­to the Pi­ar­co air­port project ought to be com­mis­sioned.

Hart be­lieves that such a move would be a waste of time and mon­ey, as the one com­plet­ed was al­ready very thor­ough.

'The Bernard Re­port and the filed tran­scripts of the notes of ev­i­dence giv­en at the en­quiry con­tain a wealth of in­for­ma­tion that should be used in­stead of think­ing of start­ing a new en­quiry," he said.

Afra Raymond

Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quests ig­nored or de­nied

At the time of the COE in­to the Pi­ar­co air­port project, the Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try was char­tered sur­vey­or and ac­tivist Afra Ray­mond.

Ray­mond led the JCC’s push for an­swers to the many ques­tions sur­round­ing the air­port project’s pro­cure­ment process.

It is a fight of his, al­beit, in a dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ty, that con­tin­ues to this day.

Since the en­quiry's com­ple­tion in 2003, Ray­mond sought on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to ob­tain a copy of the find­ings via Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quests.

His re­quests were ei­ther ig­nored or de­nied un­der a COE ex­emp­tion un­der S5(1) of the FOIA.

Asked about Gal­barans­ingh’s re­cent com­ments that a new en­quiry should be con­duct­ed, Ray­mond called the re­quest 'dan­ger­ous non­sense'. He be­lieves it would serve no le­git­i­mate pur­pose.

"The Bernard En­quiry was con­duct­ed at tremen­dous ex­pense and com­plet­ed in Au­gust 2003, but it re­mains un­pub­lished since the mat­ter is said to be un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion etc. What would pos­si­bly be the point of a new en­quiry, apart from fur­ther costs to the Trea­sury?" Ray­mond asked.

He lament­ed that jus­tice is yet to be served on the is­sue, claim­ing that more than $1 bil­lion (out of a project that cost $1.6 bil­lion) was loot­ed from the pub­lic purse, with that fig­ure traced to over­seas ac­counts.

He quot­ed a state­ment by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard in Sep­tem­ber 2012–in which the DPP said the cas­es in­volve al­le­ga­tions of a con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go of more than $1 bil­lion–as ev­i­dence to his claim.

"The Bernard Re­port in­to the Pi­ar­co air­port scan­dal must be pub­lished now…It de­tails how these vast sums of pub­lic mon­ey were stolen, who was in­volved and most im­por­tant­ly, what we need to do to pre­vent a re­peat…There has nev­er been an of­fi­cial state­ment on the fail­ure to pub­lish," the for­mer JCC pres­i­dent said.

"We seem to have been con­sumed in try­ing to pros­e­cute com­plex cas­es when we have no ex­pe­ri­ence what­so­ev­er in pros­e­cut­ing ba­sic white-col­lar crime. We need­ed to pros­e­cute a far sim­pler range of of­fences."

Ac­cord­ing to Ray­mond, the coun­try has seem­ing­ly learned lit­tle from the Pi­ar­co air­port project and its en­quiry.

He be­lieved the coun­try has not made suf­fi­cient steps to deal with the short­com­ings in its pro­cure­ment prac­tices since the high-pro­file case.

"Ab­solute­ly not. We have rulers who are most re­luc­tant to dis­turb the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments, which do deep harm to the pub­lic in­ter­est. They want to let ly­ing dogs sleep, to bor­row a phrase! It’s as if they are part of the scene, like if it is one big club or some­thing," he said.

"We are in no bet­ter place as long as the new pub­lic pro­cure­ment law re­mains unim­ple­ment­ed. The pub­lic in­ter­est re­mains in great per­il."

Ray­mond be­lieves the Pi­ar­co mat­ter, de­spite the sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey al­leged­ly in­volved, was a small­er part of a big­ger is­sue.

That big­ger is­sue, he said, is the un­ac­cept­able de­lays by the Gov­ern­ment in im­ple­ment­ing the new pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

He ac­cused At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour of mak­ing a se­ries of un­ac­cept­able state­ments on June 22, to ex­plain his rea­sons for de­lay­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

"He seemed to be plac­ing weight on cer­tain com­ments made by the CJ on be­half of the ju­di­cia­ry. Ac­cord­ing to the AG, the CJ’s cov­er­ing let­ter made it clear that he was not pro­vid­ing any le­gal ad­vice or opin­ion. Yet, the very first point the AG cit­ed from the CJ was to sug­gest se­ri­ous con­cerns over the sup­posed threat to the Sep­a­ra­tion of Pow­ers em­a­nat­ing from the new law…If both the AG’s as­ser­tions about the CJ’s sub­mis­sion are cor­rect, we are wit­ness to some­thing re­sem­bling a Sep­a­ra­tion of Pow­ers im­broglio. So, we ur­gent­ly need to see that 29-page sub­mis­sion," Ray­mond said.

Fazir Khan

"I smiled when read­ing a few days ago about a 101-year-old man, who was pros­e­cut­ed and found guilty of hav­ing been a Con­cen­tra­tion Camp Guard in World War 2, be­ing sen­tenced to a five-year prison term. I smiled, not be­cause of the ghast­ly crime, but be­cause the re­al­i­ty is that some crimes are so se­ri­ous that the pas­sage of time and dis­tance, the ques­tion of ex­pense and so on, sim­ply do not equate to the re­quire­ment for jus­tice."

'We are pay­ing $17 M year­ly for the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion since 2018'

The cur­rent pres­i­dent of the JCC, Fazir Khan, said he sup­port­ed the state­ments made by the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s for­mer pres­i­dent.

 He said if there was any util­i­ty to be had in re-hash­ing these old cas­es, like the Pi­ar­co air­port en­quiry, it has to be in high­light­ing the need for the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion to be ful­ly pro­claimed.

"Our nat­ur­al re­sources–oil and gas–con­tin­ue to dwin­dle, we can­not waste fur­ther time and mon­ey in set­ting up more com­mis­sions of en­quiries to in­ves­ti­gate cor­rup­tion in pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties," Khan said.

"We are pay­ing $17 mil­lion per an­num for The Of­fice of PR (Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion) since 2018. The Gov­ern­ment needs to give them the am­mu­ni­tion of the ful­ly pro­claimed law im­me­di­ate­ly so that there can be in­de­pen­dent over­sight of all bod­ies spend­ing pub­lic funds. We need for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Chief Jus­tice to get off their non­sense pro­cras­ti­na­tion and do the right thing now."

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, AM­CHAM T&T, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute have al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about the de­lay in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion.

 Deyals­ingh's 1997 rec­om­men­da­tions ig­nored

A re­port con­duct­ed in 1997 by Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh found that a main con­trac­tor on the project was guilty of un­eth­i­cal con­duct. He called for the con­tracts award­ed for the Pi­ar­co air­port project–which mem­bers of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try al­leged was not ten­dered–to be can­celled. They were not.

The Lindquist re­port paint­ed a pic­ture of mas­sive cor­rup­tion and fraud

Cana­di­an fi­nan­cial foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Robert Lindquist was ap­point­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2000 to in­ves­ti­gate the project by then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment (UNC). The Lindquist re­port paint­ed a pic­ture of mas­sive cor­rup­tion and fraud.

With­in two months and just days be­fore T&T’s gen­er­al elec­tion in De­cem­ber 2000, Lindquist pro­duced the in­ter­im re­port which was pre­sent­ed to for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Lindquist’s web­site, Lindquist­foren­sics.com, al­though the UNC won the elec­tion, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not con­tin­ue.

In 2001, Ma­haraj was fired by Pan­day and two oth­er min­is­ters–Trevor Su­dama and Ralph Maraj re­signed from their po­si­tions af­ter the Cab­i­net failed to ob­tain and ap­prove fund­ing for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Unit to con­tin­ue the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

A new elec­tion was held in De­cem­ber 2001, which re­sult­ed in the PNM, led by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, com­ing in­to pow­er.

The new Gov­ern­ment asked Lindquist to re­sume his work and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Pi­ar­co air­port project was restart­ed.

The re­port un­cov­ered 11 schemes: time lim­i­ta­tions, prod­uct sub­sti­tutes, tai­lored spec­i­fi­ca­tions, im­prop­er re­lease of con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion, false rep­re­sen­ta­tion, con­flict of in­ter­est, de­fec­tive pric­ing, co-min­gling of con­tracts, false in­voic­ing, price-fix­ing and bid-rig­ging and du­pli­cate con­tract pay­ments. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion led to the fil­ing of crim­i­nal charges in Trinidad and the fil­ing of a law­suit in Flori­da.

In March 2002, af­ter a two-year-long po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, six peo­ple, in­clud­ing two for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were charged with 45 fraud of­fences con­cern­ing the Pi­ar­co air­port project.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Rus­sell Hug­gins, busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh, Am­rith Ma­haraj, John Smith and Re­nee Pierre were grant­ed bail in the to­tal sum of $10.6 mil­lion.

The charges–in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and cor­rup­tion–were laid for of­fences com­mit­ted be­tween the years 1996 to 2000.

Privy Coun­cil rul­ing

In 2010, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan signed an ex­tra­di­tion or­der, grant­i­ng per­mis­sion to the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment to ex­tra­dite busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son to an­swer fraud charges.

The two men were set to face 95 charges re­lat­ed to the Pi­ar­co air­port project.

A lit­tle more than a year lat­er, how­ev­er, in 2011, the two busi­ness­men won their ju­di­cial re­view chal­lenge against AG Ram­lo­gan’s de­ci­sion, over­turn­ing their ex­tra­di­tion.

Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh called the AG’s grant­i­ng of the ex­tra­di­tion, "Un­just and op­pres­sive."

Ear­li­er this week, the Unit­ed-based Privy Coun­cil ruled that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries in­to the four sets of fraud charges re­lat­ed to the project would have to restart.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that for­mer chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­cholls ought to have re­cused him­self from one of the cas­es be­fore com­mit­ting the group of for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and en­tre­pre­neurs to stand tri­al in 2008.

In a me­dia re­lease that fol­lowed the rul­ing, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC said the coun­cil’s judg­ment does not mean that the charges laid in the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port mat­ter have been dropped.

Un­der the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 clause of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Bill 2011, which was in­tro­duced and passed by for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, the ac­cused in the Pi­ar­co air­port mat­ter would have been en­ti­tled to have their mat­ters dis­missed.

The clause stat­ed that “On an ap­pli­ca­tion by the ac­cused, a judge shall dis­charge an ac­cused if the pro­ceed­ings were in­sti­tut­ed pri­or to the com­ing in­to force of this Act and the tri­al has not com­menced with­in sev­en years af­ter the pro­ceed­ings were in­sti­tut­ed, ex­cept (a) in the case of mat­ters list­ed in Sched­ule 6; or (b) where the ac­cused has evad­ed the process of the Court and the tri­al on in­dict­ment has, for that rea­son, not com­menced.”

Fol­low­ing a mas­sive pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal back­lash, the clause was re­pealed, mean­ing the fraud cas­es were not dis­missed.

At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to con­tact Gal­barans­ingh and Bri­an Kuei Tung for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.