Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to state whether it in­tends to ful­ly pur­sue more than $1.4 bil­lion award­ed to the State as part of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Civ­il Mat­ter, as well as the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) ar­bi­tra­tion mat­ter.

At an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence on Fri­day morn­ing, in Port-of-Spain, the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said he was pleased that the ap­peal for the Pi­ar­co civ­il mat­ter con­clud­ed on Wednes­day.

On Wednes­day, a Mi­a­mi Ap­peal Court re­ject­ed busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son’s ap­peal, up­hold­ing the award of $1.4 bil­lion to the T&T gov­ern­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the State was al­so award­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey as part of the NGC-SIS ar­bi­tra­tion mat­ter. The Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, has not stat­ed the amount award­ed.

In light of both de­ci­sions, Al-Rawi said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie must take ac­tion to en­sure the mon­ey is ob­tained.

“The gold­en ques­tion, right now, is show me the mon­ey…It’s go­ing to be very in­ter­est­ing, right now, to see the AG’s vigour in pur­su­ing this mon­ey, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, the PM’s vigour, be­cause our ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter is the one who said ‘I will buss your head’ if you talk to peo­ple al­leged to be cor­rupt.

“You’re look­ing at close to TT$1.4 Bil­lion. That is at the heart of the Trinidad and To­ba­go peo­ple. You’ll know that the Gov­ern­ment is prop­er­ly look­ing for mon­ey to pay wages, salaries, and for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the Pi­ar­co civ­il case is at an in­ter­est­ing place be­cause AG Je­re­mie, who orig­i­nal­ly pur­sued the mat­ter in 2004 as a PNM AG, finds him­self as UNC AG to­day.

The for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said that all court ap­peals for the Pi­ar­co mat­ter are like­ly to be com­plet­ed by ear­ly 2026, giv­en the speed of the US court sys­tem.

“I don’t see that there will be any dif­fi­cul­ty in pur­su­ing the judg­ment and in pur­su­ing the as­sets. I don’t want to say too much about it, but if I was sit­ting in those shoes of the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al now, I’d be very vig­or­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ing cer­tain things. I would have come to you al­ready and said, ‘land­mark de­ci­sion,’” Al-Rawi said.

In March 2023, a Mi­a­mi court found Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer UNC fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jnr li­able for de­fraud­ing the T&T gov­ern­ment dur­ing the $1.6 bil­lion Pi­ar­co con­struc­tion project.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the civ­il case prac­ti­cal­ly col­lapsed be­fore he as­sumed of­fice as AG in 2015.

The mat­ter, which in­volved crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, orig­i­nal­ly had 56 de­fen­dants, some of whom plead­ed guilty, re­sult­ing in resti­tu­tion.

Eleven claims were set­tled with the gov­ern­ment, with sev­en re­sult­ing in de­fault judg­ments.

The cur­rent award, with in­ter­est, is around US$157 mil­lion.

An­oth­er US$17 mil­lion was award­ed for le­gal costs.

Mean­while, the NGC-SIS mat­ter was an ar­bi­tra­tion re­lat­ed to a $1 bil­lion con­tract to de­sign and im­ple­ment a waste­water treat­ment plant in Beetham in 2014 un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, NGC ar­gued that de­spite a 75 per cent pay­out, work was not com­plet­ed.

The gov­ern­ment has not made any pub­lic com­ments on the re­sults of the ar­bi­tra­tion mat­ter, but the Op­po­si­tion has claimed that there was a de­ci­sion.