Crime Chief Leslie James yesterday said that the police force has received a dossier of documents on the alleged fraud perpetrated by Surendra Engineering Company Limited (SECL) in the contract for the specialty hospital and an investigation is underway.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall submitted the dossier on behalf of the government.
“There is a probe underway… we are in receipt of several documents, of which we are going through and action will be taken accordingly,” James told Stabroek News yesterday.
Confident that the documents submitted by SECL for the specialty hospital contract are bogus, government last week asked the police force to begin criminal investigations. “We have the documents which impugn the integrity and authenticity of the two documents which were made,” Nandlall had said.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon had also assured that before making the decision to terminate Surendra’s contract for the US$18M project, an extensive investigation was done and that the Trinidad and Tobago Central Bank was consulted and had put in writing its findings. “What they basically said was, ‘Well this letterhead is we own but all these other things we aint know nothing about that,’” Luncheon said.
However yesterday APNU executive Joseph Harmon said SECL, from the initial tender for the contract, never submitted a performance bond, only a guarantee letter and he challenged Nandlall to make public the alleged fraudulent bond.
“There was never any bond. So all the spending that was taking place, there was no security for it. Up to now, there is none. So when the AG talks about a performance bond that was a fraudulent let him show you the bond that is fraudulent. There is none,” Harmon said.
“Never was! There was a payment to Caricom insurance for the first year and then they moved from Caricom insurance because they raised the rates…so they started shopping around to other entities and they ended up in Trinidad but there was never a performance bond executed all that was going on was preliminary stuff,” he further explained.
Asked to respond, the Attorney General rubbished Harmon’s claims and accused him of being irresponsible for going public without evidence to substantiate his claims. “It was draft performance bond and a draft advance payment guarantee that was submitted to the Ministry of Health, which was then transmitted to the AG Chambers for our legal review. It was during that review process that we sought to authenticate the company who issued these documents, and that is how the inquiry began,” he stressed.
“It is quite irresponsible for Joe Harmon to speak about documents when I have I never shared those with Joe Harmon. He has never seen the documents I have in my possession, so apparently Mr. Harmon is now competing with Mr. Ramjattan to make bizarre public statements,” he added.
The Attorney General has said that in addition to asking for an investigations of the alleged fraud, the government would also now seek to ascertain how much money, if any, it lost as a lot of work was done at the site.
He said that on the way forward, government would engage the two other “main players”—India’s Exim Bank, which had extended the credit, and the Government of India, which had crafted the project with Guyana—to work out what would be the next step.
Nonetheless, the Attorney General pointed out that his government remains committed to bringing closure to this embarrassment.
