Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Three months af­ter Gov­ern­ment pulled out of its planned arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion (CCC) to have the cor­rup­tion-taint­ed Cana­di­an con­glom­er­ate SNC-Lavalin build the Pe­nal Hos­pi­tal and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, it is still un­clear who will get the nod to com­plete the project.Dur­ing a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said no de­ci­sion had yet been tak­en on who would build and fur­nish the $1 bil­lion project at Clarke Road, Pe­nal, and he was await­ing a brief from Ude­cott.

On May 1, 2012, Ude­cott signed a frame­work agree­ment with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to de­sign the hos­pi­tal. This con­tract cost Gov­ern­ment $2.2 mil­lion.

By June, the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber of T&T and the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) be­gan ques­tion­ing why the Gov­ern­ment would en­ter in­to an arrange­ment with SNC. Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber pres­i­dent Lennox Sir­jus­ingh said since the World Bank had slapped a ten-year ban on SNC-Lavalin Inc, a sub­sidiary of SNC-Lavalin and its af­fil­i­ates, it was sus­pi­cious as to why Gov­ern­ment was pro­ceed­ing with the con­tract.

The ban pre­vent­ed SNC from bid­ding on projects fund­ed by the bank be­cause of a scan­dal over bribes.The dis­pute height­ened when sev­er­al SNC ex­ec­u­tives were ar­rest­ed over a two-year pe­ri­od and charged with fraud and bribery. Among those ar­rest­ed were Mo­ham­mad Is­mail and Ramesh Shah, who were charged with con­spir­ing to pay bribes to help SNC-Lavalin win a su­per­vis­ing con­tract worth Can$50 mil­lion for the Pad­ma bridge mega-project.

SNC-Lavalin's for­mer CEO Pierre Duhaime and for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent Ri­adh Ben Ais­sa are al­so ac­cused of var­i­ous in­frac­tions in­clud­ing bribery, fraud, and mon­ey-laun­der­ing in­volv­ing, among oth­ers, a con­tract to build the McGill Uni­ver­si­ty Health Cen­tre and pay­ments to the Gad­hafi fam­i­ly for lu­cra­tive in­fra­struc­ture con­tracts. The two have been for­mal­ly charged with fraud in re­la­tion to the McGill Health Cen­tre project.

The Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Po­lice al­so start­ed ex­am­in­ing SNC's Lavalin's in­volve­ment with for­eign na­tion­als.Ques­tions were al­so raised about the in­volve­ment of Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Philip Buxo, who worked as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Cari­com en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture di­vi­sion of SNC-Lavalin un­til his diplo­mat­ic ap­point­ment in 2010.

Kurt Ram­lal, CEO of Ude­cott, said at the time that T&T is not re­spon­si­ble for SNC-Lavalin's in­volve­ment in the po­ten­tial deal as the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment was in charge of ten­der­ing and se­lec­tion of the con­tract, based on a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment. This was dis­put­ed by the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties and af­ter a Cab­i­net meet­ing, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate its arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny in Sep­tem­ber.

Mean­while, SNC-Lavalin record­ed a CAN$72.7 mil­lion loss for the third quar­ter of 2013. The Cana­di­an press re­port­ed that SNC-Lavalin had warned its re­sults would be af­fect­ed by mon­ey-los­ing lega­cy con­tracts, weak min­ing mar­kets and a Eu­ro­pean re­struc­tur­ing charge.