Chester Sam­bra­no

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), An­cil Den­nis, has pro­vid­ed what he called ev­i­dence that the com­pa­ny which re­ceived the con­tract to con­struct a zi­pline in To­ba­go ex­ists.

The re­but­tal was in re­sponse to a claim by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine last Fri­day that when checks were made, the com­pa­ny was not found to be a le­git­i­mate en­ti­ty in the British Vir­gin Is­lands and there­fore does not ex­ist.

How­ev­er, at a brief news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day evening, Den­nis ac­cused Au­gus­tine of “ly­ing” to the peo­ple of this coun­try.

He read from a doc­u­ment that he lat­er made avail­able to the me­dia and post­ed to his Face­book page.

“I re­ceived cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the ex­is­tence of this com­pa­ny and I have in my pos­ses­sion here and I am go­ing to read the doc­u­ment. It says ter­ri­to­ry of the British Vir­gin Is­lands BVI Busi­ness Com­pa­nies Act 2004 cer­tifi­cate of good stand­ing and the name of the com­pa­ny is Oct En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed and its BVI com­pa­ny num­ber is 430213 and the com­pa­ny is not on­ly in ex­is­tence, but by virtue of the in­for­ma­tion in this doc­u­ment, the com­pa­ny is in good stand­ing,” he said.

Den­nis said the doc­u­ment has al­ready been sent to the rel­e­vant peo­ple in­volved in the zi­pline mat­ter.

“It is my ex­pec­ta­tion that this mat­ter will be con­tin­ued to be pur­sued in the court of law so that the peo­ple of To­ba­go will first­ly be fur­nished with the truth and all the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing this zi­pline and what tran­spired with that project and sec­ond­ly, that if the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists that we will be able to re­coup every bit of ex­pen­di­ture that was utilised in this project,” he added.

In No­vem­ber 2021, a Den­nis-led THA ini­ti­at­ed civ­il pro­ceed­ings against the zi­pline com­pa­ny, af­ter it failed to com­plete the project hav­ing been paid $2.5m.

Con­tact­ed to pro­vide clar­i­ty on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, lawyer for the THA John Je­re­mie, SC, said he was un­will­ing to con­firm or dis­cuss with a third par­ty the in­for­ma­tion his client (through the Chief Sec­re­tary) put in the pub­lic do­main.

At the news con­fer­ence last week, Au­gus­tine told the me­dia to con­tact Je­re­mie for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, as he was un­able to say more than he had al­ready done.

In a let­ter to the THA’s Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor in 2020, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said $2,511,210.20 was paid for ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment; how­ev­er, the ex­is­tence of these as­sets was not ver­i­fied and a vis­it to the Stores sec­tion of the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion re­vealed on­ly some ropes on hand.