A board of in­quiry in­to an al­leged ve­hi­cle rack­et at the army's Cu­mu­to Bar­racks has re­vealed no wrong­do­ing by army of­fi­cers.

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed's in­ves­ti­ga­tion in 2019 had re­vealed that some 24 Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed ve­hi­cles were hand­ed over to the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) af­ter the sug­ar gi­ant shut down its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in the ear­ly 2000s.

Se­nior sources at the TTDF had said that two of the trucks bear­ing reg­i­ment plates 5TTR-94 and 5TTR-95 were re­moved from the Cu­mu­to bar­racks with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion and sent to a Cen­tral garage in 2012 for re­pairs.

When the sto­ry broke, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had asked for a re­port about the al­leged ve­hi­cle rack­et. The TTDF had re­spond­ed briefly in­di­cat­ing that "it re­mained trans­par­ent and ac­count­able to the pop­u­la­tion in mat­ters even sur­round­ing its own of­fi­cers."

Just months af­ter, in ear­ly 2020, the TTDF held a board of in­quiry to ex­am­ine the pro­ce­dures in­volved. The pur­pose of the in­quiry, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, was to ver­i­fy the sta­tus of all Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed ve­hi­cles that came to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment (TTR).

At least eight of­fi­cers who may have had knowl­edge about what tran­spired were called in for ques­tion­ing.

The board stat­ed that they ex­am­ined the sta­tus of the Ca­roni ve­hi­cles to see if there was any breach in pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure and con­clud­ed that no one was cul­pa­ble.

The in­quiry, ac­cord­ing to se­nior TTDF sources, last­ed just over a week and was con­vened, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, by Lieu­tenant Colonel Ja­son Hills, Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer, 1st En­gi­neer Bat­tal­ion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment

The board of in­quiry stat­ed that if dur­ing the probe any "per­son may have com­mit­ted an of­fence against mil­i­tary law, in­clud­ing civ­il of­fences con­trary to sec­tion 78 of the De­fence Act Chap­ter 14:01 of the Laws of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the pres­i­dent is to ad­journ the in­quiry and seek le­gal ad­vice."

In this in­stance, they had no cause to ad­journ the in­quiry as no one was found cul­pa­ble.

The board of in­quiry had stat­ed that the mat­ter will be ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and in­di­cat­ed that the "board is not to at­tribute blame, neg­li­gence or pre­scribe any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion."

A se­nior TTDF source fa­mil­iar with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said "the pur­pose of the board was to look at pol­i­cy or pro­ce­dure that was trans­gressed and if there are un­usu­al cir­cum­stances then they will look at poli­cies or pro­ce­dures to pre­vent a re­oc­cur­rence."

The derelict truck under which the two chassis of the regiment vehicles were found hidden back in 2017 at a Central garage.

The re­port

Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly ob­tained a copy of the board of in­quiry's fi­nal re­port and the ques­tions posed to at least eight TTDF of­fi­cers in Jan­u­ary 2020.

The board com­prised Cap­tain O Rud­der-Fish­er as the pres­i­dent with mem­bers Sec­ond Lieu­tenant J Ho­sein and War­rant Of­fi­cer II N Ham­let.

There were sev­er­al ques­tions out­lined by the board of in­quiry and sim­i­lar ques­tions were posed to the eight wit­ness­es (of­fi­cers) who were called.

The of­fi­cers called as wit­ness­es were a ma­jor, one cap­tain (now pro­mot­ed to ma­jor), a lieu­tenant, a staff sergeant (now pro­mot­ed to war­rant of­fi­cer II), an­oth­er re­tired staff sergeant, and three sergeants.

Fol­low­ing the in­quiry, an­oth­er se­nior TTDF source said, the ques­tions and an­swers of the wit­ness­es "were col­lat­ed in­to one fi­nal re­port."

*The board con­firmed from all wit­ness­es that the reg­i­ment did re­ceive at least 24 ve­hi­cles from Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed from 2005 to the present.

*The board asked what was the con­di­tion of the ve­hi­cles that were re­ceived from Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed. They found out "they were dri­ven in­to camp but would have re­quired some re­pairs to be TTR stan­dard."

*The wit­ness­es were asked if these ve­hi­cles were trans­ferred to the reg­i­ment. Most in­di­cat­ed, "Yes, a great ma­jor­i­ty were and the oth­ers were re­turned to Ca­roni." Most al­so ac­knowl­edged that Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed had con­tact­ed the reg­i­ment for the ve­hi­cles to be trans­ferred.

*The board in­quired why when Ca­roni 1975 had reached out to a par­tic­u­lar lieu­tenant (name called) re­gard­ing the trans­fer of these ve­hi­cles that the reg­i­ment re­neged on the arrange­ment. How­ev­er, most were un­sure of this de­vel­op­ment and could not an­swer. Wit­ness­es in the mat­ter could not speak to own­er­ship of the ve­hi­cles, but in­di­cat­ed "there should have been re­ceipt vouch­ers signed and coun­ter­signed by Mr Ram­saran Bridge­mo­han, on be­half of Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed." The wit­ness­es in­di­cat­ed to the best of their knowl­edge that some of the ve­hi­cles had been re­turned to Ca­roni while one was auc­tioned.

*The board of in­quiry then asked, "What is the pro­ce­dure when re­ceiv­ing ve­hi­cles now from a state en­ter­prise to a gov­ern­ment agency?"

Some of the wit­ness­es with spe­cif­ic knowl­edge of this re­spond­ed stat­ing that the le­gal team re­ceives them, then it went "to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, trans­port com­mis­sion­er per­mis­sion sought to change to mil­i­tary al­pha-nu­mer­ic reg­is­tra­tion and then in­sured by the rein­sur­ance com­pa­ny."

*The board fur­ther asked if any of the ve­hi­cles re­ceived by the TTDF from Ca­roni were sent for re­pairs at any ex­ter­nal garages. The wit­ness­es' re­sponse to this was, "Yes, a few would have."

*But when the board asked two fol­low-up ques­tions to the eight wit­ness­es none of them could pro­vide an an­swer.

The fol­low-up ques­tions the board asked were if they had been "aware that some of the ve­hi­cles were tak­en for re­pairs, but nev­er re­turned to the reg­i­ment and sold as scrap iron from a garage in cen­tral Trinidad, En­ter­prise?" and al­so, "Giv­en the long ab­sence of the ve­hi­cles sent to the garage in Cen­tral Trinidad what are the checks and bal­ances in the reg­i­ment to en­sure the re­turn of such ve­hi­cles?" The re­sponse to those ques­tions by most wit­ness­es was that they were un­aware.

*The board asked un­der whose au­tho­ri­sa­tion ve­hi­cles would nor­mal­ly leave the bar­racks for re­pairs at ex­ter­nal (civil­ian) garages, and wit­ness­es con­curred that the "Com­mand­ing 1st En­gi­neer du­ty it is to ex­act re­pairs to TTR ve­hi­cles and equip­ment."

*The board al­so asked what was the mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dure for army ve­hi­cles lodged at civil­ian garages in terms of en­sur­ing prop­er re­pairs and safe re­turn of the ve­hi­cles. The wit­ness­es said this func­tion "was a pro­ce­dure of phys­i­cal checks by the OC (of­fi­cer com­mand­ing) and the CO (com­mand­ing of­fi­cer.)

What GML in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed

GML was told by TTDF sources dur­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tion that ac­cord­ing to stan­dard pro­to­col, when a dri­ver was leav­ing the bar­racks with an army ve­hi­cle or when a mil­i­tary ve­hi­cle is be­ing re­moved from the com­pound they must fill out the par­tic­u­lars in the TTR ve­hi­cle work tick­et book­let.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of this green coloured book­let with pink pages in­side. There were columns that the rel­e­vant per­son­nel had to fill out which in­clud­ed where the ve­hi­cle was leav­ing from, where it is be­ing tak­en to, the na­ture of the du­ty or load that it is car­ry­ing, and oth­er specifics.

Se­nior of­fi­cers at the TTDF head­quar­ters told Guardian Me­dia there was nev­er any record found as to who au­tho­rised the re­moval of these trucks or any pa­per­work to show these trucks had ever left the com­pound.