En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has ac­cused the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion of en­ter­ing in­to a $26 bil­lion loan arrange­ment with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval, al­leg­ing that a lack of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and prop­er over­sight con­tributed to the demise of State-owned oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin.

Speak­ing dur­ing Fri­day’s Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day de­bate on the mo­tion ti­tled “Gov­er­nance of State En­ter­pris­es and State-Con­trolled In­sti­tu­tions” in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Mooni­lal ques­tioned the Op­po­si­tion’s moral au­thor­i­ty to call for im­proved cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, giv­en its own record in gov­ern­ment.

He de­scribed Petrotrin as a ma­jor ex­am­ple of the dis­man­tling of a State en­ter­prise un­der the PNM.

“They en­tered a $26 bil­lion loan arrange­ment with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval, al­lowed the board and se­lect­ed min­is­ters in the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to de­stroy the en­er­gy sec­tor, the bedrock of the eco­nom­ic sec­tor,” Mooni­lal said.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter, who said he had doc­u­ments in his pos­ses­sion, al­so al­leged that loans were ob­tained with­out the nec­es­sary ap­provals and due dili­gence in re­la­tion to the Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) project and the Gas Op­ti­mi­sa­tion Pro­gramme.

He claimed that even Petrotrin’s board un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had ac­knowl­edged short­com­ings in trans­paren­cy and the ap­pli­ca­tion of project man­age­ment prin­ci­ples.

Mooni­lal ar­gued that the Op­po­si­tion was now cham­pi­oning the same prin­ci­ples it had failed to up­hold while in of­fice.

“To­day we have to hear about trans­paren­cy, about fair­ness. They used to ap­point a board mem­ber on Fri­day and fire him on Mon­day. That is what they did when they were there,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of us­ing its mo­tion to tar­get for­mer Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) CEO Kieno Cox rather than gen­uine­ly ad­dress­ing gov­er­nance con­cerns with­in the State sec­tor.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les had called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to some of Cox’s busi­ness deal­ings at the State-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal ac­cused Op­po­si­tion MPs of hav­ing a “per­va­sive ob­ses­sion” with Cox, claim­ing they had de­vot­ed much of their con­tri­bu­tions to the for­mer CEO in­stead of iden­ti­fy­ing in­stances of mis­con­duct by min­is­ters in the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The min­is­ter al­so ref­er­enced oth­er con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the Vin­cent Nel­son af­fair and al­leged po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the grant­i­ng of a firearm li­cence.

The mo­tion calls for strength­ened trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, com­pe­tence, in­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence and ad­her­ence to cor­po­rate gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples across State en­ter­pris­es and State-con­trolled in­sti­tu­tions.

In­sist­ing that the mo­tion should not be sup­port­ed un­der any cir­cum­stances, Mooni­lal re­served his right to con­tin­ue his con­tri­bu­tion when the de­bate re­sumes.