Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?The find­ings of an au­dit in­to the mil­lion-dol­lar street-light­ing project at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) were for­ward­ed to the of­fices of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Shar­man Ot­t­ley. Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid made the dis­clo­sure at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. Ab­dul-Hamid said the re­port was sent on Oc­to­ber 2 to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to de­ter­mine the guilti­ness or im­prop­er con­duct of of­fi­cials in the street-light­ing project. He said the re­port from the Cen­tral Au­dit Unit of the Min­istry of Fi­nance did not make a de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion on the guilti­ness or im­prop­er con­duct from of­fi­cials in the street-light­ing project. Ab­dul-Hamid added it was out­side of his port­fo­lio to make such a de­ter­mi­na­tion. "With re­spect to the pro­ce­dures, is­sues of pro­ce­dures and com­pli­ance with ten­der rules, again the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's De­part­ment is the most com­pe­tent de­part­ment to make that fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion," he said.

"And so the re­port has been sent in its en­tire­ty, along with the com­ments of the man­age­ment and board of T&TEC. All the com­ments have been sent to those re­spec­tive of­fices." Ab­dul-Hamid re­fut­ed al­le­ga­tions that the son of a se­nior mem­ber of Gov­ern­ment was en­gaged in cor­rupt prac­tices through the street-light­ing project. "I did not see any ev­i­dence of that. I have had no in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence of that. "As far as I un­der­stand, from the knowl­edge that I have, that seems to be en­tire­ly a fab­ri­ca­tion but, again, once the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ex­am­ines the doc­u­ments, if he is able to find some­thing to that ef­fect, then he will de­cide and pro­ceed with it as is nec­es­sary but as far as I am con­cerned, I have not been able to iden­ti­fy any ba­sis for that al­le­ga­tion what­so­ev­er," he said. Among the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion that arose from T&TEC's street-light­ing project in­clud­ed the ma­nip­u­la­tion of con­tracts by a se­nior of­fi­cial of the com­pa­ny.