Police investigators have spent the last three days examining the secret contract millhouse at the Maraval offices of Education Facilities Company Ltd (EFCL) and trying to secure documents in connection with the alleged activity that occurred there in recent months.
The T&T Guardian understands that officers were called in by the current board, as part of the ongoing criminal probe into the EFCL's operations under its former board.
After their visits the officers reportedly carted away several hard drives from computer systems at the offices and other documents.
The T&T Guardian reported last Friday that the private room was discovered when the new board, led by chairman Arnold Piggott, toured the Maraval offices last week. A small group of EFCL employees were found to be doctoring documents and back-dating contracts.
The employees were sent home pending an investigation and their clearance to the company's IT infrastructure was suspended. This also prompted a parallel financial audit into the State-run special purpose company.
Insiders attached to the previous EFCL management revealed that some contractors paid as much as $60,000 for the a favourable outcome to tendering processes. This meant that only a select group of contractors won tenders to build schools under the remit of EFCL.
Once the contract was "won," the T&T Guardian was told, then another percentage of the overall cost of the contract was paid to continue to buy further favours from the EFCL.
When the new board took over last week, its first move was to suspend the chief executive officer, Kiran Shah and the chief operations officer, Sharma Maharaj
Yesterday, Piggott and his team met with Education Minister Anthony Garcia officially for the first time since they took their respective offices.
In describing the EFCL under its previous leadership, Garcia said "unfortunately something had fallen down and had fallen down badly." He admitted that several contractors were owed a "large sum of money" from the last fiscal year but was unable to quantify the amount.
"Those debts have to be repaid in this new year and the board would be dealing with that," he said.
But the current investigation, Garcia said, would now mean that all invoices and existing debts would have to be verified before any payments could be made.
"Yes, we are in the process of conducting an audit into the operations at the EFCL and we have to verify the sums of money, this is why at this point I could not have given you an exact figure," Garcia said.
"The money owed can be looked at in two aspects. One: Money owed for work that has been done and money owed as a result of penalties. As soon as we are in a position to verify these we will have no difficulty in giving that information."
Garcia was also unable to list the contractors owed money by the EFCL, adding that once the audit is completed there would be more information.
"Only after the audit is done can we identify if a contractor has been in breach but at this point it is difficult to cast any aspersions or to pinpoint anyone or any group of contractors," he said.
He said he had no specific timeline as to when that audit would be completed.
The T&T Guardian last week received an internally circulated memo which stated that international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers was in charge of the audit.
Garcia also said too many of the schools under EFCL were allowed to fall into disrepair. He listed 13 schools under EFCL which to date remain closed for different reasons.