Gail Alexan­der

The for­mer Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO was fired last year be­cause he breached his du­ty in fail­ing to ob­tain WASA Board ap­proval and the prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion for a $2 mil­ion pay­ment, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte.

Le Hunte gave the ex­pla­na­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day fol­low­ing queries from UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark on the cir­cum­stances which led to the sus­pen­sion and sub­se­quent dis­missal of the ex- CEO —El­lis Bur­ris last year.

Bur­ris was fired last May af­ter be­ing sent on va­ca­tion as a re­sult of an in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion. At the time Bur­ris said the mat­ter was with his lawyers who would “use their le­gal minds to de­ci­pher what is right from wrong. Bur­ris was ap­point­ed CEO in Ju­ly 2017.

Le Hunte had said last year Bur­ris was sent on leave be­cause of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions that he’d tak­en ac­tions with­out the Board’s in­volve­ment.

At yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate, Le Hunte said the for­mer CEO was ad­vised to go on leave in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate a probe in­to the pay­ment of al­lowances on or around Oc­to­ber 10, 2018 out­side of his pre­scribed lim­it, with­out the WASA Board’s ap­proval .

Le Hunte said, “The Board af­ter giv­ing full con­sid­er­a­tion to the mat­ter and on the ba­sis of ev­i­dence avail­able to it , in­clud­ing the re­spons­es and in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the CEO con­clud­ed that the CEO breached his fidu­cia­ry du­ty of care and faith­ful ser­vice to Wasa in fail­ing to ob­tain the re­quired ap­proval of the Board. “

“Fur­ther, that the CEO failed to fol­low due process to en­sure the pay­ment was prop­er­ly au­tho­rised and in ced­ing his ju­ris­dic­tion and/or au­thor­i­ty in au­tho­ris­ing the pay­ment. In the cir­cum­stances and based on loss of trust and con­fi­dence in the CEO, his ser­vice was ter­mi­nat­ed. The CEO has sub­se­quent­ly in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to bring le­gal pro­ceed­ings on the mat­ter b is­su­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter.

On Mark’s query about the pay­ment, Le Hunte said it was in the vicin­i­ty of, or about $2 mil­lion. He couldn’t say how many ben­e­fit­ted from the trans­ac­tion.

But Le Hunte said the sys­tems in­volved in the is­sue have been tight­ened at WASA to en­sure that peo­ple are made aware of their lim­its and when they have lim­its, cer­tain things re­quire “es­ca­la­tion.”

He said when peo­ple have cer­tain lines of au­thor­i­ty and there are pro­ce­dures , in run­ning an or­gan­i­sa­tion one had to en­sure peo­ple act­ed with­in the pre­scribed lim­its of way of au­thor­i­ty oth­er­wise it was left open for a lot of things to hap­pen.

“We al­so en­sured man­agers are aware of their lim­its and un­der­stand the con­se­quences of not keep­ing things in the pre­scribed lim­its,” he added.

Al­so at yes­ter­day’s sit­ting, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi— on oth­er queries — said T&T is a “very liti­gious so­ci­ety.”

He said he has seen vast amounts of lit­i­ga­tion re­gard­ing the state con­cern­ing po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty. He said there can be no greater in­de­pen­dent re­view­er than the courts

He re­it­er­at­ed that some raids at Gulf View last year in­volved po­lice be­ing in “hot pur­suit of an al­leged per­pe­tra­tor of a kid­nap­ping.

Al-Rawi said po­lice can en­ter a house with­out a search war­rant when ef­fect­ing an ar­rest. Of­fi­cers may en­ter the premis­es with­out war­rant to pre­vent a mur­der, ar­rest a per­son they fol­lowed on­to the premis­es, to pre­vent com­mis­sion of a crime or fol­low an of­fend­er run­ning from of­fi­cers.