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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Patriotic calls for review of its refinery bid

by

283 days ago
20241006

Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s (OW­TU) Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed claims the En­er­gy Min­is­ter’s al­leged doc­u­ment of a US$1.5B fraud­u­lent wire trans­fer in the re­fin­ery bid­ding process in Par­lia­ment is ir­rel­e­vant and is now re­quest­ing that it be con­sid­ered again to op­er­ate the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

On Fri­day, Min­is­ter Stu­art Young bran­dished a doc­u­ment in the Low­er House pur­port­ing to be a wire trans­fer of US$1.5 bil­lion sent to Pa­tri­ot­ic’s ac­counts through a lo­cal bank.

How­ev­er, he said the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee tasked with han­dling the sale of the re­fin­ery told the Gov­ern­ment that the doc­u­ment was fake and their due dili­gence showed that there were no such funds in Pa­tri­ot­ic’s ac­count.

He claimed this was the rea­son Pa­tri­ot­ic did not move on to the next round of the bid­ding process.

Pa­tri­ot­ic has since re­spond­ed twice to this al­le­ga­tion. Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Pa­tri­ot­ic is­sued a state­ment with the cap­tion, “Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gy Ser­vices Co Ltd, re­jects out­right the mis­lead­ing state­ments made by the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.”

How­ev­er, in­stead of ad­dress­ing the most di­rect ac­cu­sa­tion made by Young, who claimed to have a fake doc­u­ment pur­port­ing to be a wire trans­fer of the US$1.5 bil­lion, the com­pa­ny in­stead spoke of its fi­nan­cial part­ner.

In the me­dia re­lease, Pa­tri­ot­ic said the min­is­ter’s state­ment was mis­lead­ing and mis­chie­vous, adding, “What he pre­sent­ed un­der par­lia­men­tary cov­er was NOT Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nan­cial part­ner that met with the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.”

The re­lease added that the sole­ly se­lect­ed fi­nancier would have been sub­mit­ted to the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al, which both ac­cept­ed the sub­mis­sion.

“In fact, the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee would have in­ter­viewed and vet­ted Pa­tri­ot­ic’s pre­ferred fi­nancier, and at no time did Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al or the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee raise any con­cern about the pre­ferred fi­nancier. As a mat­ter of fact, there was some lev­el of com­fort and sat­is­fac­tion with the pre­ferred fi­nan­cial part­ner.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic added that it did not re­ceive any com­mu­ni­ca­tion or in­di­ca­tion from ei­ther the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee or Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al as to the un­suit­abil­i­ty of its pre­ferred fi­nan­cial part­ner.

How­ev­er, Young dis­missed their re­sponse.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said the is­sue was nev­er about a “pre­ferred fi­nan­cial part­ner.”

“I stat­ed, with ev­i­dence, that Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies & Tech­nol­o­gy Co Ltd, pro­duced a fake doc­u­ment pur­port­ing to be a wire trans­fer to a lo­cal bank for USD$1.5B. Due dili­gence con­firmed that no such wire trans­fer was re­ceived by the lo­cal bank to the ac­count of Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies,” the min­is­ter said via What­sApp mes­sen­ger.

He said Pa­tri­ot­ic was yet to de­ny what he said in Par­lia­ment.

“It is clear and ob­vi­ous that Pa­tri­ot­ic is avoid­ing re­spond­ing to the said fake doc­u­ment that they sub­mit­ted,” he added.

Young chal­lenged Pa­tri­ot­ic to an­swer whether there was a doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by them in­di­cat­ing a pur­port­ed wire trans­fer of US$1.5 bil­lion. This prompt­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic to re­spond again to the min­is­ter.

This time it sought to clar­i­fy that their ini­tial fi­nanciers could not show proof of funds and were there­fore elim­i­nat­ed, which paved the way for a new fi­nancier who met all the re­quire­ments of the com­mit­tee.

The sec­ond me­dia re­lease was this time ti­tled, “Clar­i­fi­ca­tion on eval­u­a­tion and fi­nan­cial part­ner sub­mis­sions.”

The com­pa­ny gave a time­line of events start­ing on May 10, 2024, where it said it sub­mit­ted a non-bind­ing pro­pos­al iden­ti­fy­ing three po­ten­tial fi­nanciers.

Pa­tri­ot­ic said that at a meet­ing on June 7, both Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al and Pa­tri­ot­ic in­di­cat­ed that they were still do­ing their due dili­gence and ver­i­fi­ca­tion to sub­stan­ti­ate the fund­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the three that were sub­mit­ted.

Pa­tri­ot­ic went on to say that it could then not sub­stan­ti­ate the proof of fund­ing, and they elim­i­nat­ed all three on Au­gust 3 and sub­mit­ted a new fi­nancier to Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al for the con­sid­er­a­tion of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.

It said on Au­gust 21, its pre­ferred fi­nan­cial part­ner, along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pa­tri­ot­ic, met with the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and pre­sent­ed their fi­nanc­ing plan, which was re­ceived with­out ob­jec­tion.

“All doc­u­men­ta­tion pro­vid­ed was thor­ough­ly re­viewed, and no con­cerns were raised re­gard­ing their va­lid­i­ty at the meet­ing. At no time was any of the elim­i­nat­ed three po­ten­tial fi­nanciers sub­mit­ted to the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee or brought back in­to the process as they did not meet Pa­tri­ot­ic’s re­quire­ment,” Pa­tri­ot­ic said.

Pa­tri­ot­ic added, “There­fore, what­ev­er doc­u­ment the min­is­ter was bran­dish­ing is to­tal­ly ir­rel­e­vant.”

The com­pa­ny is now say­ing if the so-called fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment was why it was re­ject­ed, then it calls for “a re­assess­ment of every­thing that was pre­sent­ed by our fi­nan­cial part­ner to the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee on the 21 Au­gust 2024, as we are as­sured that we al­ready ad­hered to all the pro­ce­dures and process­es re­quired.”

The cho­sen bid­ders for the re­fin­ery were al­so re­vealed by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter dur­ing the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and in­clude CRO Con­sor­tium, a Trinidad-based group made up of DR Com­modi­ties Ltd, Chemie-Tech and Ocala; US-based iN­ca En­er­gy LLC; and Nige­ria-based Oan­do PLC.

These se­lec­tions were made by Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) and an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.

Pa­tri­ot­ic said it re­mains open to di­a­logue with the En­er­gy Min­is­ter. The com­pa­ny’s sec­ond re­sponse was sent to Young for fur­ther com­ment late yes­ter­day evening. How­ev­er, he did not re­spond. 


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