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Monday, July 21, 2025

Warner to sue Farley over damning allegations

by

Asha Javeed, Lead Editor Investigations
764 days ago
20230618
THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

(with re­port­ing by Shal­iza Has­sanali, Clay­ton Clarke, Rishard Khan)

Keon Warn­er, son of To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, has ad­mit­ted that Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd (WC­SL) made a ver­bal re­quest for $60 mil­lion from Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine for out­stand­ing pay­ments from con­struc­tion projects.

Warn­er al­so ad­mit­ted their com­pa­ny had been fac­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues, and they made the re­quest for the mil­lions owed through Au­gus­tine, who, on his own ac­cord, went to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for help.

Last Fri­day, at a press brief­ing, Au­gus­tine al­leged the leak of a tape which is now un­der po­lice probe, was part of an ex­tor­tion plot to get the THA to pay mon­ey to Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd.

Au­gus­tine said that the com­pa­ny had been paid $25.2 mil­lion by his ad­min­is­tra­tion for a se­ries of projects, some of which had ques­tions about them.

Au­gus­tine has al­leged that the $100 mil­lion was sent to To­ba­go “be­cause two se­nior mem­bers” of the Gov­ern­ment called “and asked that I find a way to give Warn­er’s $60 mil­lion out of the $100 mil­lion.”

“Of the $100 mil­lion that was sent, it is be­lieved that one con­trac­tor must re­ceive $60 mil­lion of it, while the THA at the same time is bat­tling a court case for $80 mil­lion for a road built while I was still in school.

“I am cer­tain if I check care­ful­ly no oth­er con­trac­tor in the To­ba­go space, no oth­er con­trac­tor that op­er­at­ed in the To­ba­go space, even if they came here from Trinidad, has re­ceived any pay­ment close to $25.2 mil­lion,” Far­ley said on Fri­day. But Warn­er charged, “He (Au­gus­tine) brought that on his own. He came back and said the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment agreed to send $100 mil­lion on the premise that he pays the out­stand­ing debt in the THA.”

Warn­ers in the spot­light

For the past two years, the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies Lim­it­ed has been in the spot­light.

The main rea­son is that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is per­son­al friends with its chief ex­ec­u­tive, Al­lan Warn­er.

It’s be­cause of this re­la­tion­ship that Warn­er, a To­ba­go-based con­trac­tor, has had all the projects and work he has re­ceived scru­ti­nised by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to de­ter­mine whether Warn­er has ben­e­fit­ed from Row­ley’s po­si­tion as PM.

On Fri­day, Au­gus­tine showed what ap­peared to be screen­shots of a What­sApp ex­change with Warn­er’s son Keon Warn­er.

Al­lan, whose com­pa­ny has been a con­trac­tor with the THA since 1998, told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that his son was the spokesman on this mat­ter.

In re­sponse, Warn­er told the Guardian that a meet­ing took place yes­ter­day to dis­cuss le­gal ac­tion against Au­gus­tine and he is "go­ing all the way with this” mat­ter.

The chief sec­re­tary has al­leged that WC­SL pro­ceed­ed to em­ploy sev­er­al strate­gies to get him to pay the mon­ey, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing to leak the clip to “scare” him in­to “tak­ing State funds and throw­ing it his way.”

He said the con­trac­tor took the THA to court for $47.7 mil­lion in claims for road resur­fac­ing and in­fra­struc­ture projects. For his part, Au­gus­tine said the THA had been “noth­ing but fair” in its pay­ment process.

Warner’s Hardware, Scarborough, Tobago.

Warner’s Hardware, Scarborough, Tobago.

CLAYTON CLARKE

Keon Warn­er de­fends work

Mean­while, Warn­er told the Sun­day Guardian that his road projects were done above board and that his com­pa­ny is not in­volved in any cor­rup­tion or black­mail­ing.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tion, Warn­er de­fend­ed his com­pa­ny and his name, stat­ing that “every­thing in To­ba­go, so far, was done above board.”

“I am not go­ing to ease him up at all. Where he claimed that we got paid for work that we nev­er did that is crazy. I have all my pa­per­work … I have all my doc­u­ments. I am go­ing all the way with this,” he said.

Warn­er said his bank ac­count would re­flect the work he de­liv­ered and what was paid to him, in­sist­ing that Au­gus­tine has been grasp­ing at straws to dis­tract and save him­self from his life­long mis­deeds.

“The voice record­ing has been ex­posed and I’m def­i­nite­ly not the one that record­ed and ex­posed it.”

Warn­er de­scribed Au­gus­tine’s al­le­ga­tion of a black­mail cam­paign as “crazy talk.”

Ad­mit­ting that both he and his fa­ther are PNM mem­bers, he said he was asked to sup­port the PDP but he turned them down.

Af­ter 18 months, Warn­er said no con­trac­tor has seen any cor­re­spon­dence of an au­dit “to sug­gest that there was any wrong­do­ing.”

“If WC­SL is viewed as cor­rupt, how come the THA paid the com­pa­ny?” he asked.

Hav­ing re­ceived $32.2 mil­lion in pay­ment from the THA so far, Warn­er said WC­SL was still owed WC­SL $47 mil­lion for projects de­liv­ered in 2021.

Warn­er said WC­SL took loans to un­der­take the projects.

“The work was done and it is very sick­en­ing to see there is a po­lit­i­cal change and some­body is now com­ing to say to you, nah you are not get­ting paid. That is mad­ness.”

Faced with a fi­nan­cial bind, Warn­er said they had to send home 300 work­ers while he owes the banks.

“My hard­ware is now closed due to lack of pay­ments. All we got from Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his team are slaps in the face. Is a kind of vin­dic­tive slap in the face.” Warn­er said about 14 roads were al­so left un­done due to the lack of pay­ments which he wrote the THA about but got no re­sponse.

PM on Warn­er in 2022

In Oc­to­ber 2022,  at his con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at the Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Dr Row­ley ac­cused the THA of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against To­ba­go con­trac­tors for projects on the is­land. Dr Row­ley said there was pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for Trinidad con­trac­tors over their To­ba­go coun­ter­parts.

“To­ba­go got $300 mil­lion from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. They gave every cent of it to con­trac­tors in Trinidad.

“The mon­ey came in­to To­ba­go, THA writes the cheques to the con­trac­tors, and that mon­ey is com­ing back to Trinidad be­cause they don’t like the To­ba­go con­trac­tors be­cause they are PNM.

“You hear them talk­ing about (Al­lan) Warn­er (To­ba­go con­trac­tor). You know why they call­ing Warn­er’s name?

“It’s be­cause they are in busi­ness in To­ba­go. Would you be­lieve that?” Dr Row­ley said at the time.

“To­ba­go peo­ple, in­stead of be­ing proud they gen­er­at­ed two or three con­trac­tors who could at least com­pete and do the work in To­ba­go, they joined the UNC and called peo­ple names in stu­pid­ness.

“But what is hap­pen­ing in the mean­time is, the de­vel­op­ment ends up in the hands of con­trac­tors in south and cen­tral Trinidad. So it is im­por­tant what hap­pens in elec­tions.”

Row­ley de­fend­ed him­self in 2021

Row­ley, de­fend­ing him­self on the pur­chase of a prop­er­ty in To­ba­go at a me­dia con­fer­ence in 2021, re­vealed that Al­lan had been a busi­ness part­ner re­gard­ing a To­ba­go farm that start­ed in 2008 when Row­ley was a PNM back­bencher.

In one in­stance, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ques­tioned: “Prime Min­is­ter, are you aware in the pub­lic con­struc­tion of the ter­mi­nal at the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, In­ez In­vest­ment of your friend Al­lan Warn­er is in­volved in the con­struc­tion with sub­con­tracts and are you aware of that?”

Dr Row­ley then re­spond­ed, “Every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go is my friend in­clud­ing Al­lan Warn­er.” Dr Row­ley then an­swered: “But I am not aware that Al­lan Warn­er is in­volved in this project at Crown Point.”

For his part, Dr Row­ley has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions as part of the UNC’s elec­tion-time “play­book” of char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion.

In 2021, Dr Row­ley was wrong­ly ac­cused by MP Sad­dam Ho­sein of not de­clar­ing a $1.2 mil­lion in­vest­ment prop­er­ty he owned in To­ba­go to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC).

The prop­er­ty was built by In­ez In­vest­ments, whose prin­ci­pal is Warn­er.

Dr Row­ley had said that the IC’s Page 9 Form, which list­ed all prop­er­ties owned by him and his wife and one shared by his chil­dren, in­volved six prop­er­ties.

The first was Good­wood Park (1985) and the most re­cent was the Shir­van In­ez De­vel­op­ment.

“Date of ac­qui­si­tion—Feb­ru­ary 22, 2019. Orig­i­nal cost—$1.2 mil­lion. Es­ti­mat­ed val­ue at De­cem­ber 2019—$1.2 mil­lion,” he had told the me­dia.

He had said the source of funds for the pur­chase of his To­ba­go town­house was his and his wife’s sav­ings and they were among the first pur­chasers when draw­ings were avail­able and ap­proved.

He said his wife had been work­ing for umpteen decades and was about to re­tire and he had nev­er been un­em­ployed since uni­ver­si­ty.

The PM said he had com­plied with the law, paid a pur­chase price the ven­dor agreed on and ne­go­ti­at­ed no “dis­count”.

Row­ley told the me­dia that he did not hide that Al­lan Warn­er was his busi­ness part­ner.

He had not­ed that the PM’s To­ba­go res­i­dence was built by Parks and to his knowl­edge, Warn­er’s firm on­ly paved the dri­ve­way.

Keon Warn­er said that his dad was a close as­so­ciate of Dr Row­ley.

“My fa­ther has known Dr Row­ley … I think they went to school to­geth­er. I’m not sure if it is pri­ma­ry or high school. I don’t know the full his­to­ry.

“Yes, it is known that my fa­ther and Dr Row­ley, I would not say they are close … but they are as­so­ciates. To say that there is a spe­cial friend­ship there is just old talk. That is far from the truth.”

As busi­ness peo­ple, Warn­er said, they ten­der for jobs in T&T.

“There is no friend­ship to say that some­body is favour­ing us. We work hard.”

TobagoPolitics


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