For­mer Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly An­cil Den­nis says he is “very hap­py” about the re­cent de­vel­op­ments with re­spect to the con­tro­ver­sial $2.5 mil­lion zi­pline project in To­ba­go.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held on Fri­day the cur­rent THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed that the com­pa­ny paid by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to car­ry out the project does not ex­ist.

In 2015, the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion, led by then-sec­re­tary Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, an­nounced the 1.5-kilo­me­tre zi­pline project but it was nev­er com­plet­ed.

The is­sue was a hot-but­ton one in the Jan­u­ary 2021 THA elec­tion cam­paign and David­son-Ce­les­tine and then Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Au­gus­tine ver­bal­ly squared off for weeks over the mat­ter.

The for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had ini­ti­at­ed a court mat­ter con­cern­ing the zi­pline project with Se­nior Coun­sel John Je­re­mie as lead at­tor­ney.

“Af­ter com­menc­ing civ­il pro­ceed­ings against Orig­i­nal Canopy Tours Lim­it­ed for the re­cov­ery of mil­lions of dol­lars spent on the project, it was dis­cov­ered that the com­pa­ny was not, in fact, a le­git­i­mate en­ti­ty. In fact, at­tor­ney John Je­re­my and a team did the nec­es­sary search in the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI), where the com­pa­ny was said to be reg­is­tered based on the com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed to the THA. It was found that the com­pa­ny does not ex­ist there at all,” Au­gus­tine said.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Den­nis said he was pleased with the sit­u­a­tion.

“I am very hap­py about this de­vel­op­ment be­cause I be­lieve that it is a pos­i­tive step to­wards the res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter. This is­sue came to the fore just around the time of the Jan­u­ary 2021 THA elec­tion. It was utilised on the cam­paign trail by the cur­rent Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine in a very ma­li­cious and mis­lead­ing way,” Den­nis said.

“When it came to the fore I took a de­ci­sion that this mat­ter had to be pur­sued dili­gent­ly and to the fullest ex­tent so that the peo­ple of To­ba­go could get the truth con­cern­ing this project.

“So all the pub­lic ser­vants who re­port­ed to me the ad­min­is­tra­tor of tourism and the chief ad­min­is­tra­tor were giv­en clear in­struc­tions to pur­sue this mat­ter to the fullest ex­tent and af­ter months of pe­rus­ing files and even hav­ing meet­ings with the in­di­vid­u­als who were sup­posed to be the sup­pli­er of this zi­pline,” he said.

Den­nis said Au­gus­tine and the PDP had crit­i­cised this move stat­ing it was statute barred.

At­tor­neys moved against the lo­cal pro­mot­ers of the com­pa­ny, Richard Gra­ham and Dar­ren Hre­niuk, and the High Court is­sued a freez­ing in­junc­tion against the as­sets of both men in T&T

This was grant­ed by Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran on No­vem­ber 5.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, at­tor­neys in the BVI were re­tained and the High Court there recog­nised the in­junc­tion from this coun­try.

This took place on Thurs­day by Jus­tice Ger­hard Wall­bank in the East­ern Caribbean Supreme Court’s com­mer­cial di­vi­sion for the High Court of the BVI.

Au­gus­tine said the court is al­so al­low­ing the THA to serve le­gal pa­pers on the banks in the BVI, “so that the ac­counts, all the fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions through our bank­ing sys­tem here and in the BVI that dealt with this mat­ter and the his­to­ry of the fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions will be brought to play by the court and brought in­to the court in this mat­ter.”

Au­gus­tine al­so re­vealed that along­side the civ­il pro­ceed­ings, the THA has al­so made a re­port to the po­lice via the Fraud Squad.

“So I am hap­py that we are at this stage where courts in two ju­ris­dic­tions T&T and the BVI have grant­ed or­ders to freeze the as­sets of those in­volved those who were sup­posed to sup­ply this zip lime project for the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” Den­nis said.

Den­nis slammed Au­gus­tine for how he han­dled the sit­u­a­tion while on the cam­paign trail.

“Far­ley Au­gus­tine in my opin­ion was be­ing very ma­li­cious and vi­cious when he lied to the peo­ple of To­ba­go at­tempt­ing to to­tal­ly de­stroy a To­ba­go woman in his quest for pow­er at the lev­el of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly so this mat­ter will be pur­sued.

“I hope the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion does not get in the way of that so that this mat­ter can be pur­sued to the fullest ex­tent and at that point in time the peo­ple of To­ba­go will know ex­act­ly what tran­spired with this project,” Den­nis said.