For­mer head of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil, Afra Ray­mond, is ques­tion­ing whether or not any pos­si­ble sale of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery to In­di­an busi­ness­man, Naveen Jin­dal, is with­in the re­mit of the ex­ist­ing pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Ray­mond said he was not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with the furore over the charges against the in­dus­tri­al­ist in­stead, called for safe­guard mea­sures must be in place.

“If in fact the Prime Min­is­ter met with this gen­tle­man and he is a large scale in­vestor, that is some­thing that hap­pens a lot yes there is an ap­pear­ance that may cause peo­ple to raise eye­brows but per se in and of it­self, there is noth­ing wrong with that,” Ray­mond said.

On June 17, the Prime Min­is­ter met with Jin­dal, Chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Lim­it­ed at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. Jin­dal is said to be in­ter­est­ed in the po­ten­tial of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

Ray­mond, a char­tered sur­vey­or and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd con­tend­ed that the sys­tems in­clud­ing the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion must en­sure that trans­ac­tions re­gard­ing the re­fin­ery have been con­duct­ed above board.

“When this trans­ac­tion came in­to the pub­lic aware­ness five or six years ago when we were dis­cussing the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the pro­cure­ment law was not in place, the law on­ly came in­to place in April 2023 which means when the trans­ac­tion start­ed there was no pro­cure­ment law in place and one of the things that I would want to find out and get clar­i­fi­ca­tion on, from ei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or the OPR or even the Min­is­ter of en­er­gy be­fore we go fur­ther, is whether in fact the ex­ist­ing one year old pro­cure­ment law is in­deed in ef­fect when this trans­ac­tion start­ed,” Ray­mond ques­tioned.

The pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty act was pro­claimed last April.

Yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar posed sev­er­al ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter about Jin­dal and the sale of the re­fin­ery.

She asked whether or not the Nico­las Maduro gov­ern­ment of Venezuela was covert­ly in­volved with Jin­dal in the ac­qui­si­tion of the re­fin­ery.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader on Mon­day evening dur­ing a meet­ing ques­tioned if it was “the Venezue­lans” who put the Gov­ern­ment on to Jin­dal to get the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. She had slammed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments that he was un­aware Jin­dal was on al­leged cor­rup­tion charges. The Prime Min­is­ter on Wednes­day fired back at Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ing that he will meet with the Op­po­si­tion Leader re­gard­ing her con­cerns about the in­tegri­ty of the In­di­an busi­ness­man on­ly if she at first deals with the crim­i­nal charges fac­ing Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee. 

The pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is aimed at pro­vid­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment, re­ten­tion and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty, in ac­cor­dance with ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and val­ue for mon­ey.