Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty can­di­date Trevor James says for­mer THA chief sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis and for­mer in­fra­struc­ture sec­re­tary Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes could end up in jail, over what he de­scribed as mas­sive cor­rup­tion in road con­tracts across To­ba­go.

While Des Vi­gnes could not be reached for com­ment, Den­nis said James should be the one wor­ried about jail.

James first made the al­le­ga­tions while ad­dress­ing a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sun­day night in Mo­ri­ah, where he ac­cused Den­nis and Des Vi­gnes of hand­pick­ing a sin­gle con­trac­tor and award­ing mul­ti­ple road con­tracts with­out ten­der­ing.

He told sup­port­ers that the mat­ter re­mains “un­fin­ished busi­ness” and said To­bag­o­ni­ans must not for­get what he de­scribed as se­ri­ous wrong­do­ing.

“When we have this group of peo­ple in To­ba­go who be­lieve that some­how they sit qui­et­ly for a few months, that all that they did in the past will fade away and the heat will some­how cool down and To­ba­go is go­ing to for­get,” James said. “But we can’t for­get.”

James claimed that on De­cem­ber 18, 2020, Den­nis and Des Vi­gnes award­ed 25 road con­tracts to one con­trac­tor on the same day, by­pass­ing the ten­der­ing process.

“So Kwe­si and An­cil Den­nis de­cid­ed...to hand out 25 con­tracts to one of the con­tract ca­bal,” he said. “He jumped over ten­der­ing, he jumped over ten­der re­sponse, he jumped over eval­u­a­tion, and he de­cid­ed that he go­ing to hand­pick this con­trac­tor and award him 25 con­tracts in one day.”

He al­leged that many of the projects were ei­ther in­com­plete or nev­er start­ed, but were still ful­ly paid for.

“Half of these projects were not com­plet­ed. Twen­ty-five per cent of them were not start­ed, and all of them were paid for,” James said.

James list­ed sev­er­al road projects across the is­land, re­peat­ed­ly stat­ing that no work was done de­spite pay­ments be­ing is­sued.

He said he checked on his own.

He claimed all 25 con­tracts were award­ed to Warn­ers Con­struc­tion and were signed off at ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil lev­el.

James al­leged the to­tal val­ue of the con­tracts amount­ed to more than $58 mil­lion.

He warned that the files would be turned over for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“You have a fi­nan­cial trained spe­cial­ist who we will give these files to, en­sure that when Kwe­si jump in, he might jump straight in­to a jail cell,” James said.

He said vot­ers must re­mem­ber the al­le­ga­tions and in­sist­ed the TPP is seek­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Hours af­ter James made the ac­cu­sa­tions, PNM mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris ac­cused James of do­ing the very thing he is ac­cus­ing the PNM of— sign­ing off on con­tracts lead­ing up to elec­tion day.

And in re­sponse, An­cil Den­nis de­fend­ed him­self, say­ing James is act­ing out of des­per­a­tion.

“James is re­al­ly des­per­ate. He re­alis­es the writ­ing is on the wall, and this is their fi­nal act of des­per­a­tion. And they are, in fact, grasp­ing at straws. At this point in time, I will sim­ply say that I’ve been in pub­lic life for 14 years now. I’ve nev­er been the sub­ject of any po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I’ve nev­er been the sub­ject of any in­tegri­ty com­mis­sion in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The po­lice has nev­er is­sued any war­rant for me. My name has nev­er been found in any court doc­u­ments, and have nev­er been ac­cused of act­ing il­le­gal­ly where the dis­charge of my pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties is con­cerned.”

He said James should be the one wor­ried about jail.

“The same can­not be said for Mr James, so at this point in time, he shouldn’t re­al­ly be talk­ing to me or about me.”