Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will not apol­o­gise for its pur­port­ed role in dis­suad­ing In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist Naveen Jin­dal from in­vest­ing in the moth­balled Petrotrin oil re­fin­ery.

Speak­ing at the par­ty’s week­ly press brief­ing at its head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark dis­missed crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over ques­tions it had raised about Jin­dal af­ter he vis­it­ed T&T to hold dis­cus­sions over the re­fin­ery in June.

Mark’s com­ments on the is­sue came hours af­ter Row­ley re­vealed that Jin­dal, chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd, had with­drawn his in­ter­est, al­leged­ly due to at­tacks on him by the Op­po­si­tion. Row­ley made the rev­e­la­tion at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Diego Mar­tin West 51st con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence on Fri­day.

Mark claimed the Op­po­si­tion was sim­ply per­form­ing its du­ty when it raised con­cerns over Jin­dal fac­ing cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing charges in In­dia, al­leg­ing that he bribed a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter for coal min­ing con­ces­sions.

“It is our du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the Op­po­si­tion and the al­ter­na­tive gov­ern­ment and the gov­ern­ment in wait­ing to raise is­sues sur­round­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est,” Mark said.

“We are stand­ing in a gap be­tween a cor­rupt, ly­ing and thiev­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion and the peo­ple’s wel­fare, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in T&T.”

Mark de­nied al­le­ga­tions that the UNC was in­tent on de­tract­ing for­eign in­vest­ment be­ing sought by Gov­ern­ment.

“Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth be­cause un­der the UNC, led by the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as our prime min­is­ter, we at­tract­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment. That is our record,” he claimed, with­out di­rect­ly iden­ti­fy­ing any par­tic­u­lar project.

Mark said he was con­cerned that Row­ley and his Cab­i­net had failed to per­form due dili­gence checks on Jin­dal be­fore en­ter­ing in­to the dis­cus­sions. He claimed the in­for­ma­tion could have been ob­tained through a sim­ple in­ter­net search.

“I am not cast­ing any as­per­sions on any­one but I find it strange that the Gov­ern­ment of this coun­try find them­selves be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with some very ques­tion­able and sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters and com­pa­nies whose track records in terms of per­for­mance leaves a lot to be de­sired,” he said.

Mark point­ed to a do­na­tion of rice and cook­ing oil gift­ed to this coun­try by the Haryana State Co­op­er­a­tive Sup­ply and Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed (HAFED) and an­nounced by Row­ley at a post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing last month.

Mark claimed Jin­dal had close ties to an of­fi­cial of that com­pa­ny.

Ref­er­enc­ing re­ports of the deal­ings of Jind­lal’s com­pa­ny in Bo­livia, Mark ques­tioned the do­na­tion, which is ex­pect­ed to be dis­trib­uted to the needy in T&T.

“This is what is go­ing on here. That is part of the play­book of the Jin­dal group,” Mark said.

He al­so ques­tioned whether Jind­lal’s in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery was gen­uine.

“If we take what has hap­pened in Bo­livia and we trans­late it to T&T, it is the same play­book. He had no in­ten­tion in in­vest­ing in T&T,” Mark said.

In his state­ment, Row­ley sug­gest­ed that it was the Op­po­si­tion that was re­spon­si­ble for Jin­dal com­mu­ni­cat­ing his de­ci­sion on Ju­ly 26.

“This is an in­vestor who was pre­pared to con­sid­er putting in a bid in the of­fer of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$700 mil­lion to bring that re­fin­ery in­to op­er­a­tion, and the on­ly peo­ple in this coun­try who don’t want that to hap­pen is a hand­ful of politi­cians who don’t care if you eat the bread the dev­il knead be­cause they pre­fer to have the re­fin­ery there talk­ing stu­pid­ness about it than to see it see it re-start­ed and op­er­at­ed in a dif­fer­ent way for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T,” he said.

Row­ley al­so sought to ex­plain why Jin­dal’s of­fer ap­peared to be more favourable than oth­er bids re­ject­ed by Gov­ern­ment for the re­fin­ery, which was moth­balled when for­mer State oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin was re­struc­tured in late 2018.

“One of the rea­sons why the re­fin­ery was a mon­ey los­er was be­cause it was ob­so­lete and to bring it back in­to op­er­a­tion, it means that you have to up­grade it sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” he said.

“One of the up­grades in­cludes putting in mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy be­cause some of those di­als are 100 years old. You would have to spend some sig­nif­i­cant mon­ey on the phys­i­cal man­age­ment of the re­fin­ery and this is from a com­pa­ny that has the abil­i­ty to do it. Not like some peo­ple who want the re­fin­ery and can­not pay their lawyers,” he added.

Jin­dal re­port­ed­ly at­trib­uted his de­ci­sion to the Op­po­si­tion’s stance in his let­ter.

“It is with great dis­ap­point­ment, there­fore, that I must ad­dress the re­ac­tion led by the of­fi­cial Op­po­si­tion par­ties fol­low­ing our vis­it,” Jin­dal said.

“The char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion I ex­pe­ri­enced mere­ly for con­sid­er­ing the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Guaracara re­fin­ery was deeply dis­heart­en­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing,” he added.

He al­so claimed his ex­pe­ri­ence may al­so de­ter oth­er po­ten­tial in­vestors.

“More­over, the un­just at­tacks di­rect­ed at our Group’s com­pa­nies, en­ti­ties that op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly and are un­con­nect­ed to le­gal mat­ters mis­char­ac­terised in the lo­cal press and par­lia­ment, set a trou­bling prece­dent for po­ten­tial in­vestors plan­ning to in­vest in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Jin­dal said.

Mark al­so raised ques­tions about the sale of Cli­co’s 56.53 per cent share­hold­ing in Methanol Hold­ings In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd (MHIL) to Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Lim­it­ed, a sub­sidiary of Swiss-based Pro­man Group.

Mark sug­gest­ed that the US$347 mil­lion ($2.35 bil­lion) paid for the stake was un­der the mar­ket val­ue of shares based on pre­vi­ous val­u­a­tion re­ports. He called for the dis­clo­sure of all doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the deal.

He al­so called on Row­ley to not sell any ma­jor Gov­ern­ment as­sets be­fore the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions.

“You are on your last days. You are the out­go­ing prime min­is­ter. Keep your dirty paws off the peo­ple’s as­sets,” he said.