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Monday, July 21, 2025

Rowley alleges UNC used agency to pay CA

by

Renuka Singh
2069 days ago
20191121
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks to Minister of Works and Transport, Rohan Sinanan, during their Local Government election campaign meeting at Signature Hall, Montrose Chaguanas, on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks to Minister of Works and Transport, Rohan Sinanan, during their Local Government election campaign meeting at Signature Hall, Montrose Chaguanas, on Tuesday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is al­leg­ing that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) fa­cil­i­tat­ed pay­ments to Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca un­der the guise of ad­ver­tis­ing con­tracts through State com­pa­nies.

Speak­ing at Tues­day night’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion meet­ing at Sig­na­ture Hall, Mon­trose Ch­agua­nas, Row­ley list­ed pay­ments to the tune of $13 mil­lion for a pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA).

He said the pay­ments start­ed at $250,000 and bal­looned to over $13 mil­lion with­in the space of a few months.

He said while Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca bomb­shell re­port with a “who the hell cares”, he was more cu­ri­ous about what Ch­aguara­mas was ad­ver­tis­ing for that $13 mil­lion.

He said the mon­ey spent un­der the CDA was a “joke” com­pared to the spend­ing at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Row­ley pre­sent­ed and read from a doc­u­ment about sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions at the NGC.

“All of a sud­den the NGC was re­quired to have Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty projects,” he said.

Row­ley said the doc­u­ments de­tailed an ex­am­i­na­tion of the records dur­ing 2010 to 2015 dis­clos­es de­lib­er­ate at­tempts to con­ceal ex­pen­di­ture, poor record keep­ing, run­away and in­de­fen­si­ble wastage of mon­ey and si­phon­ing of mon­ey.

Row­ley al­so de­tailed the ten­der and con­tract award sys­tem at the NGC un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said that five dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies with the same list of di­rec­tors would ten­der for a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts at NGC.

“The man­age­ment said no, we are not do­ing it be­cause it does not meet our ten­der­ing rules, you know what they did? They took the pack­age of $274 mil­lion with the same fraud­u­lent ten­der­ing arrange­ment, car­ried it from NGC to an­oth­er State com­pa­ny, PSAEL (Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd) and had that com­pa­ny award the con­tracts,” he said.

He said there is no doc­u­men­ta­tion for the com­pa­nies to use to de­fend them­selves in court.

He read from a pile of doc­u­ments and said he had an­oth­er pile at home which he in­tends to pass to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments Row­ley de­tailed mas­sive mis­spending by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion at the NGC.

Row­ley said un­der the la­bel Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Brand­ing, NGC’s spend­ing bal­looned from $57 mil­lion in 2013 to $236 mil­lion in 2015.


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