Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath says he can­not re­call why he is­sued two First Cit­i­zens bank cheques to­talling TT$135,800 in Oc­to­ber 2014 to then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bissses­sar while he was her spe­cial ad­vi­sor. The cheques now form part of ev­i­dence col­lect­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in a case in­volv­ing the MP and a fe­male rel­a­tive.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained copies of the cheques, de­tailed cab­i­net notes and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion which we were re­li­ably in­formed are at the cen­tre of the po­lice probe. Of­fi­cers have ob­tained sev­er­al le­gal or­ders over the last few months to pe­ruse sev­er­al bank ac­counts in the on­go­ing case, af­ter al­leged sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties re­lat­ed to the MP’s rel­a­tive were first flagged by the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FI­UTT).

Dur­ing a walk­a­bout in the Buen In­ten­to hous­ing com­mu­ni­ty in Princes Town on Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia ques­tioned Padarath about the pay­ments made to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and if he re­mem­bered what they were for.

“I have no rec­ol­lec­tion for what this would have been for. It is, in fact, le­git­i­mate I can tell you that if it is, in fact, le­git­i­mate cheques, I can­not rec­ol­lect this was in 2014 but it would have been to­tal­ly above board,” Padarath said.

The source of the mon­ey and pay­ments are on­ly part of a wider po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a com­pa­ny which is linked to Padarath’s rel­a­tive.

Doc­u­ments show that Padarath de­posit­ed close to $703,000 from his RBC Fi­nan­cial (Caribbean) Bank ac­count on March 7, 2016, to the rel­a­tive’s ac­count, al­so at the same bank, via an ac­count to ac­count trans­fer of the funds. The com­plex fi­nan­cial trail then points to the rel­a­tive set­ting up sev­er­al oth­er bank ac­counts, in­clud­ing two chequing ac­counts for her com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to the fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion ob­tained over the years, Padarath al­leged­ly made sev­er­al cheque pay­ments to the rel­a­tive amount­ing to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars and, in some cas­es, she trans­ferred these funds in­to in­sur­ance poli­cies and to her com­pa­ny.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found that the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny was first reg­is­tered on Jan­u­ary 28, 2011, and had the ad­dress of #20 Green Heart Dri­ve, Cou­va North, Cou­va, which was the home ad­dress of both Padarath and the rel­a­tive in ques­tion.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion al­so re­vealed that for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 15, 2014-Jan­u­ary 26, 2017, the sum of $162,500 was al­leged­ly paid to Padarath via cheques from the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny. There were three cheques for $50,000, $10,000 and $2,500 dur­ing that pe­ri­od, all paid on dif­fer­ent dates for the three-year pe­ri­od.

When ques­tioned about this pay­ment, Padarath smiled and said, “My on­ly com­ment to you is that I am an on­ly child and if you look at the date of those cheques, it was my birth­day and I am to­tal­ly above board and there is a clear at­tempt to sul­ly my name and I am not con­cerned one bit or the oth­er.”

A mon­ey trail tracked by au­thor­i­ties re­vealed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2013-2018, just over $15 mil­lion passed through the ac­counts of the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny. In­ci­den­tal­ly, un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, the com­pa­ny ob­tained con­tracts from the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) and Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (PSAEL) in the sum of $3.2 mil­lion be­tween the pe­ri­od 2012-2015.

One of the cheques Barry Padarath made out to UNC leader Kamla Persad Bissessar in 2014.

Doc­u­ments ob­tained by in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­vealed that the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny se­cured nine con­tracts through the PSAEL dur­ing the pe­ri­od April 2012-2015. In­ves­ti­ga­tors found that four of the nine con­tracts were award­ed to the com­pa­ny through a mer­it award sys­tem. They al­so dis­cov­ered that in Jan­u­ary 2011, Ren­tok­il Ini­tial (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed ten­dered a bid to fur­nish, in­stall and ser­vice soap dis­pensers at Petrotrin of­fices in Pointe-a-Pierre af­ter there was an in­vi­ta­tion to ten­der by PSAEL. They dis­cov­ered that the con­tract was grant­ed to the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny, “notwith­stand­ing Ren­tok­il Ini­tial (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, which has the abil­i­ty to per­form a sim­i­lar task, ten­dered a much low­er quote.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so not­ed, “There were two in­stances where based on the ten­der­ing process se­lec­tion us­ing the low­est bid­der cri­te­ria, the ser­vice providers rec­om­mend­ed were not award­ed the con­tract.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors added that Padarath’s rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny was award­ed the con­tract by the Fi­nance and Ten­ders Com­mit­tee notwith­stand­ing the fact the bid ten­dered was dou­bled the amount quot­ed by the oth­er ser­vice providers.

The EF­CL al­so award­ed at least 20 con­tracts to the rel­a­tive’s com­pa­ny be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2011 to Sep­tem­ber 2014. In some in­stances, in­ves­ti­ga­tors say they were un­able to say if work was done on some of the schools that the com­pa­ny was giv­en the con­tract for and stat­ed that “at least five projects in one way or the oth­er does not con­tain the rel­e­vant pay­ment in­for­ma­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked Padarath about a $703,000 pay­ment made to his rel­a­tive’s ac­count and the on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his salary when he was the PM’s aide and the in­con­sis­ten­cies in amounts de­posit­ed over the pe­ri­od of 2013-2017 in­to his per­son­al ac­count.

Padarath gave the fol­low­ing ex­pla­na­tion, “As I served as an aide, my role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty are to deal with con­tin­gency when the prime min­is­ter trav­els. Every prime min­is­ter is pro­vid­ed with a per diem when you trav­el and placed in a cheque in your name. That is where those sums would have come from.”

Padarath added, “Sep­a­rate and apart from that, you have to ac­count when the cab­i­net re­leas­es funds to some­one hold­ing a con­tin­gency. It is not a mat­ter you get free mon­ey to spend, you have to rec­on­cile ac­counts when you re­turn to the coun­try and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter should have every piece of doc­u­men­ta­tion where those ac­counts are rec­on­ciled.

“When I left the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, every trav­el that I ac­com­pa­nied Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar on was rec­on­ciled with an ac­count­ing of­fi­cer who went item by item, list by list, doc­u­ment by doc­u­ment, bill by bill, to en­sure those sums were ac­count­ed for. As I said, my hands are clean. I am not both­ered by PNM machi­na­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia ob­tained the cab­i­net notes for the pe­ri­od 2013-2015, where in­ves­ti­ga­tors pe­rused all au­tho­rised trav­el for Padarath, which in­clud­ed the amounts for trav­el and the vote from which the mon­ey was to be tak­en. They found that there was no vari­ance to the amounts dis­bursed as ap­proved by the cab­i­net to be paid.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ed that the doc­u­ments “pro­vid­ed by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter was done and it re­vealed that there were a num­ber of vari­ances in re­spect to the amounts paid to Bar­ry Padarath when com­pared to the amounts as were ap­proved in the cab­i­net notes.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­leged Padarath “earned way in ex­cess of his el­i­gi­ble re­mu­ner­a­tion dur­ing his tenure as the per­son­al aide to the prime min­is­ter.”

When ques­tioned about the vari­ances as point­ed out by the po­lice, Padarath shot back stat­ing, “That will be an is­sue that will have to be dealt with by the au­thor­i­ties in terms of cross-check­ing with the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, but as I in­di­cat­ed when I left the Of­fice of the prime min­is­ter every sin­gle trav­el was ac­count­ed for.”

Asked if he would be will­ing to co­op­er­ate if the au­thor­i­ties ap­proached him, Padarath said, “These mat­ters are in the hands of my at­tor­neys and it will be dealt with by my at­tor­neys, I am not say­ing any­thing fur­ther. Let them do their home­work.”