Renu­ka Singh

The for­mer head of mar­ket­ing and Petrotrin pres­i­dent Ken­neth Al­lum be­lieves that Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny should black­list ES Eu­ro Ship­ping for its fail­ure to be trans­par­ent in the fu­el deal which is still un­der scruti­ny with many unan­swered ques­tions.

“It’s the on­ly re­course,” Al­lum told Guardian Me­dia.

Paria en­tered in­to an agree­ment with ES Eu­ro ship­ping a com­pa­ny owned by Wilmer Ru­per­ti, a man with known close ties to the Maduro Regime on March 28, and ship­ping con­tract has been a source of con­tention com­ing as it did just a day af­ter the vis­it to this coun­try of the Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and a del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed top of­fi­cials of the Venezue­lan oil com­pa­ny PDVSA.

That con­tract by Paria’s own ad­mis­sion via a paid ad­ver­tise­ment seemed to have changed des­ti­na­tion with­out the con­sent of the com­pa­ny and ques­tions were raised by Paria as to whether the ship­ment was be­ing sent to Venezuela a sanc­tioned coun­try.

Paria, in a paid ad­ver­tise­ment last Mon­day said that on­ly af­ter the change in des­ti­na­tion was in the pub­lic do­main did they con­tact Eu­ro Ship­ping and it was con­firmed that the ship­ment was go­ing to Aru­ba.

Eu­ro Ship­ping, Paria said, pro­duced a redact­ed sales con­tract with a lo­cal, Aruban buy­er. A redact­ed con­tract is one in which sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion has been ex­punged or re­moved.

The Aruban gov­ern­ment has since said that not on­ly did it not have any deal with T&T, but it is the on­ly body au­tho­rised to con­duct any fu­el sales and that the ship, MT Al­dan, nev­er en­tered Aruban wa­ters or in­di­cat­ed to the Aruban har­bour mas­ter that it in­tend­ed to berth in Aruban docks.

Paria said that Eu­ro Ship­ping in­formed them that the gas was sold to Aru­ba, but the Aruban gov­ern­ment, through its lo­cal em­bassy, said that nei­ther the gas nor the ship en­tered their mar­itime bor­ders.

That tanker, MT Al­dan, has been of­fline and im­pos­si­ble to lo­cate since it left Pointe-a-Pierre on April 21 the last avail­able da­ta of the MT Al­dan is April 22nd which puts the po­si­tion of the MT Al­dan at 179 nau­ti­cal miles.

One ves­sel find­er site has since list­ed it as “de­com­mis­sioned or lost at sea” while an­oth­er site just lists its last port of call of Pointe-a-Pierre 30 days ago.

But was there a sanc­tions clause in the con­tract be­tween Paria and Eu­ro Ship­ping?

The first sales agree­ment be­tween T&T’s Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and ES Eu­ro Ship­ping did not con­tain a sanc­tions clause for­bid­ding Eu­ro Ship­ping from sell­ing fu­el to Venezuela. Though the sale took place back in April, it is still un­clear where the fu­el went.

Two lawyers who worked with Petrotrin and who agreed to speak with Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty ex­plained that a sanc­tions clause is usu­al­ly in­clud­ed in all in­ter­na­tion­al con­tracts and con­tained with­in the terms and con­di­tions of spot-sales con­tracts.

It pre­vents the sale of fu­el to any sanc­tioned coun­try.

In the ab­sence of a sanc­tion clause, a buy­er can pur­chase oil from T&T and ship it to a coun­try that has been em­bar­goed by the Unit­ed States open­ing the lo­cal sell­ing com­pa­ny to US sanc­tions as well for aid­ing a sanc­tioned coun­try. The com­pa­ny, ac­cord­ing to the lawyers, can al­so be black­list­ed by oth­er com­pa­nies want­i­ng to dis­tance them­selves from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sanc­tions.

Paria, in an ad­ver­tise­ment one week ago, said it con­tact­ed Eu­ro Ship­ping on April 24 and on­ly then, af­ter the mat­ter was in the pub­lic do­main, in­clud­ed a sanc­tion clause in their con­tract.

By then the com­pa­ny, Eu­ro Ship­ping said the des­ti­na­tion was Aru­ba, but the Aruban gov­ern­ment has since de­nied that.

The ques­tion now is where is the fu­el and why wasn’t the nor­mal sanc­tion clause in­clud­ed in the first con­tract?

The lawyers who spoke with Guardian ex­am­ined the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Paria since this is­sue arose and said that sanc­tion claus­es are al­ways in­clud­ed in all con­tracts, even in ones for spot sales like the sale agree­ment be­tween Paria and Eu­ro Ship­ping.

Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed and chair­man New­man George have been gone silent since the com­pa­ny pub­lished the me­dia ad­ver­tise­ment last Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to that ad­ver­tise­ment, which has been Paria’s first and on­ly com­ment on the mat­ter thus far, Paria was con­tact­ed on March 28. No word or clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how the com­pa­ny was con­tact­ed for this sale.

Paria chair­man New­man George had con­firmed to the Guardian in April that he was con­tact­ed by Eu­ro Ship­ping on March 28.

“Mat­ters like these, even spot sales usu­al­ly don’t even in­clude the GM (gen­er­al man­ag­er), it’s the sales team and le­gal that re­al­ly han­dles sales mat­ters. So it is al­ready un­usu­al that the chair­man and the gen­er­al man­ag­er were in­volved,” one lawyer said.

“A spot sale is a run-of-the-mill trans­ac­tion which Paria in­di­cat­ed its chair­man and GM had full au­thor­i­ty over. Why was the chair­man in­volved?” the lawyer asked.

Ac­cord­ing to Paria’s ad­ver­tise­ment on April 14, the com­pa­ny was “ad­vised by one of the in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors re­tained to pro­vide ser­vices to the ves­sel while in Trinidad, that the nom­i­na­tion to pro­vide said ser­vice was re­quest­ed by a com­pa­ny with Venezue­lan ties.

The for­mer Petrotrin lawyer said this was very strange.

“De­spite the red flag, the trans­ac­tion con­tin­ued,” the lawyer said.

Not on­ly did Paria con­tin­ue with the deal, but de­spite that red flag did not at­tach any amend­ments to the con­tract at that time.

The Paria’ ad­ver­tise­ment stat­ed that on April 21, the ves­sel was loaded and left T&T. At that time Paria be­lieved that the fu­el was des­tined for St Eu­sta­tius.

Days lat­er, Paria would be in­formed, through the pub­lic do­main that the ves­sel was ac­tu­al­ly en route to Aru­ba.

“There is a clear breach of the con­tract at that time by Eu­ro Ship­ping who failed to ad­vise of the change in des­ti­na­tion,” the lawyer said.

“Why was the de­ci­sion tak­en by Paria to cure the breach as op­posed to tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against Eu­ro Ship­ping for that breach giv­en the red flag raised on April 14 and in­for­ma­tion on the pub­lic do­main,” the lawyer asked

An­oth­er for­mer Petrotrin lawyer said that claus­es were in­tro­duced in­to all con­tracts years ago when the com­pa­nies were unit­ed un­der Petrotrin. That has been cor­rob­o­rat­ed by for­mer heads of Petrotrin.

Al­lum whose ex­per­tise in the oil and en­er­gy sec­tor spans decades told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view last Sun­day, that sanc­tions were par for the course in Petrotrin con­tracts. He ex­plained that they would on­ly be left out if the sell­er (Paria) trust­ed that the com­pa­ny was go­ing to its stat­ed des­ti­na­tion.

“Once you do­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al sales agree­ment, you would put in a sanc­tions clause, when I say in­ter­na­tion­al, I mean an out-of-Trinidad sale, you would put in a sanc­tions clause,” Al­lum said.

“You would do that but I don’t know what hap­pened here, I am read­ing it just like you,” Al­lum said.

Al­lum ex­plained that while it was not un­com­mon for a ship­ping com­pa­ny to change des­ti­na­tions af­ter the sale, “it is in­cum­bent on the buy­er (Eu­ro Ship­ping) to in­form the sell­er (Paria),” he said.

In Paria’s own words, this did not hap­pen.

Paria, in the ad­ver­tise­ment last Mon­day said that on­ly af­ter the change in des­ti­na­tion was in the pub­lic do­main, then they con­tact­ed Eu­ro Ship­ping and it was con­firmed that the ship­ment was go­ing to Aru­ba.

Eu­ro Ship­ping, Paria said, pro­duced a redact­ed sales con­tract with a lo­cal, Aruban buy­er.

How­ev­er, the Aruban gov­ern­ment has since said that not on­ly did it now have any deal with T&T, but it is the on­ly body au­tho­rised to con­duct any fu­el sales and that the ship, MT Al­dan, nev­er en­tered Aruban wa­ters or in­di­cat­ed to the Aruban har­bour mas­ter that it in­tend­ed to berth in Aruban docks.

“Af­ter they leave the port, they have to come back to you and say, look, I’ve changed des­ti­na­tions,” Al­lum said.

Al­lum said he did not re­call such an in­ci­dent ever oc­cur­ring dur­ing his tenure.

“Dif­fer­ent traders be­have dif­fer­ent­ly,” he said.

He said if it was a cus­tom­ary sale and there was a mea­sure of trust, then the sanc­tions clause could have been omit­ted. That was not the case in this in­stance, how­ev­er, as it was Paria’s first busi­ness deal­ing with Eu­ro Ship­ping and the com­pa­ny had a his­to­ry with Paria.

“I pre­sume what hap­pened in this case, be­cause they go­ing to an­oth­er port than what they stat­ed orig­i­nal­ly, they had to amend the doc­u­ment,” he said.

Al­lum said such ac­tions should lead to a black­list­ing of the com­pa­ny and Paria should not con­duct any busi­ness with them in the fu­ture.

“It’s the on­ly re­course,” he said.

For­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Petrotrin, Khalid Has­sanali said he has been out of the in­dus­try for five years and was not sure what was the nor­mal pro­to­col now.

“When I was there the le­gal de­part­ment would han­dle those de­tails,” he said.

He said that the sanc­tions clause was a nor­mal part of the con­tract.

“Some­body made a de­ci­sion, but I have no idea,” he said.

He said that con­tracts usu­al­ly have a nor­mal tem­plate and the par­tic­u­lars were changed for each client.

When asked if the gen­er­al terms in­clud­ed a sanc­tions clause, Has­sanali said he had no idea what was be­ing done now.

Paria GM and chair­man silent

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Joanne Sinanans­ingh, who cur­rent­ly heads the le­gal de­part­ment at Paria, al­though she read both mes­sages on What­sApp, there was no re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia has al­so been try­ing to con­tact Mo­hammed and George.

On May 18, Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Mo­hammed and in a fol­low-up phone call, Mo­hammed said he could not re­spond un­til he con­ferred with his chair­man.

He did not re­spond but the com­pa­ny put out an ad­ver­tise­ment last Mon­day in­stead and Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion:

“The clause in the con­tract that for­bade the buy­er from sell­ing to a sanc­tions coun­try, does this mean that Paria will be seek­ing some sort of le­gal re­dress?”

Is there any le­gal ac­tion that Paria can take against a pur­chas­er who vi­o­lates the con­tract or the sanc­tion clause?

The Aruban Gov­ern­ment said that they are the on­ly one au­tho­rised to pur­chase fu­el for the coun­try. What does this mean for the sale?

The Aruban gov­ern­ment to­day said that there was MT Al­dan nev­er en­tered its wa­ters. If a buy­er breached the con­tract and even pro­duced a redact­ed copy of a bill of sale, is there any le­gal re­course for Paria?

Is Paria con­cerned about the fall out from the deal?

Si­lence from George:

What was the cost of the 150,000 bar­rels of fu­el?

If two as­sur­ances and two claus­es were need­ed, what red flags were raised in the due dili­gence that ne­ces­si­tat­ed its in­clu­sion in the con­tract?

Is en­sur­ing that the fu­el not end up in a sanc­tions coun­try a new part of con­tracts or one added specif­i­cal­ly for this sale?

How much did Eu­ro Ship­ping pay for the gas?

The clause in the con­tract that for­bade the buy­er from re­selling to a sanc­tioned coun­try, does this mean that Paria will be seek­ing le­gal re­dress?

Is there any le­gal ac­tion that Paria can take against a pur­chas­er who vi­o­lates the con­tract or the sanc­tions claus­es?

The Aruban gov­ern­ment said they are the on­ly one au­tho­rised to pur­chase fu­el for the coun­try. What does that mean for the sale?

The Aruban Gov­ern­ment says that the tanker, Al­dan, nev­er en­tered its wa­ters. Does this sig­ni­fy a breach in the con­tract?

Does Paria have any le­gal re­course?

What does redact­ed mean?

To redact is to ed­it, or pre­pare for pub­lish­ing. Fre­quent­ly, a redact­ed doc­u­ment, such as a memo or e-mail mes­sage, has sim­ply had per­son­al (or pos­si­bly ac­tion­able) in­for­ma­tion delet­ed or blacked out; as a con­se­quence, redact­ed is of­ten used to de­scribe doc­u­ments from which sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion has been ex­punged.