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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

$1.2 B unaccounted for at National Security Ministry

by

Renuka Singh
2473 days ago
20181007

Renu­ka Singh

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has failed to pro­duce doc­u­ments to sup­port spend­ing over $1.2 bil­lion over the past five years. The lat­est re­port pro­duced by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­veals the star­tling fig­ures un­ac­count­ed for at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty from 2013.

A list of the miss­ing con­tract agree­ments was de­tailed in the lat­est Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port and at­tached the bud­get bun­dles giv­en out to Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and Sen­a­tors af­ter Mon­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

The three im­por­tant pages of the bun­dle give a sum­ma­ry of the min­istry's ex­pen­di­ture, di­vi­sions, and projects but al­so lists the da­ta and fig­ures that were nev­er pre­sent­ed to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the list­ing, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty failed to pro­duce de­tails for a whop­ping $1 bil­lion in con­tracts agree­ments that it had en­tered in­to but were not yet com­plet­ed.

Aside from that star­tling fig­ure, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port al­so list­ed an­oth­er $891 mil­lion in con­tracts and con­tract agree­ments that were nev­er pro­duced for the au­dit.

Un­der the head­ing "in­ven­to­ry con­trol" the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed that $203 mil­lion in con­tracts were "not seen en­tered in the Con­tract Reg­is­ters re­quired by Fi­nan­cial Reg­u­la­tions 129".

At the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) an­oth­er $183 mil­lion "were not en­tered in a con­tract reg­is­ter as re­quired".

The re­port al­so found dis­crep­an­cies with re­gards to ex­pen­di­ture un­der the min­istry where some $45 mil­lion was miss­ing. The min­istry pro­vid­ed the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al with doc­u­ments to sup­port the spend­ing of $72 mil­lion, yet some $117 mil­lion was ac­tu­al­ly spent by the min­istry.

"Dif­fer­ences amount­ing to $45,717,123.85 were not­ed be­tween the to­tal com­mit­ments of $117,938,698.60 ac­cord­ing to the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­count and the au­dit­ed fig­ure of $72,221,573.22 as per the Vote Books," the re­port not­ed.

A Vote Book is the min­istry's record of ex­pen­di­ture.

The re­port al­so not­ed that $1 mil­lion was spent on six con­tract agree­ments for Base In­fra­struc­ture at a camp in La Ro­main in south Trinidad, Fe­lic­i­ty in Ch­agua­nas, and For­res Park in Clax­ton Bay. Once again though, no doc­u­men­ta­tion on that spend­ing was pro­vid­ed to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

The min­istry al­so failed to pro­duce the con­tract agree­ments it had with sev­er­al car rental com­pa­nies and se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies. Those miss­ing con­tract agree­ment to­talled $1.2 mil­lion.

The re­port not­ed that $12.6 mil­lion should not have been in­clud­ed on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­count but was in­clud­ed for un­known rea­sons.

"They were ei­ther com­plet­ed in pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial years or not ap­proved by Cab­i­net."

Six Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters in of­fice be­tween 2013-2018

In the time­line of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port, 2013 to present, there have been six na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters. Un­der the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment busi­ness­man Jack Warn­er was in charge of that min­istry from June 2012-April 2013.

He was re­placed briefly by Em­manuel George af­ter a reshuf­fle. George was Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for just six months and by Sep­tem­ber 2013 he was re­placed by cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith. Grif­fith held on to that post un­til Feb­ru­ary 2015 when he was re­moved from of­fice and re­placed by Brigadier Carl Al­fon­so un­til the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, Ed­mund Dil­lon held the post from Au­gust 2015 to Au­gust 2018 when he was re­placed by Stu­art Young.

The T&T Guardian reached out to the for­mer min­is­ters. Grif­fith de­clined to com­ment on "any­thing that hap­pened dur­ing my time as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty".

Dil­lon, Al­fon­so, and Young did not re­turn phone calls and mes­sages.

George, how­ev­er, said he was un­aware of the miss­ing mon­ey from the min­istry.

"But you have to know that some­times those things are out of the min­is­ters' hands. It is han­dled by the ac­count­ing team and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and then goes to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. The min­is­ter may not even have sight of it," George said.

BOX

Role of a PS

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment web­site, Cit­i­zens Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Por­tal, a Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary is re­spon­si­ble for gath­er­ing and analysing the ev­i­dence to sup­port a course of ac­tion (or in­ac­tion) pro­posed to a min­is­ter. As a mem­ber of the Pub­lic Ser­vice top man­age­ment team, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary shares a col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the man­age­ment of the Pub­lic Ser­vice as a whole.

The PS al­so acts as pol­i­cy ad­vis­er to the min­is­ter and is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide ob­jec­tive ad­vice on var­i­ous is­sues, on the gov­ern­ment’s op­tions in deal­ing with them, and on the im­pli­ca­tions of each op­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, the pol­i­cy ad­vice is ex­pect­ed to be based on a com­bi­na­tion of hard ev­i­dence and in­tu­itive as­sess­ment and re­quires a com­plete un­der­stand­ing of the tech­ni­cal, le­gal and fi­nan­cial is­sues.


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