While the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on June 11 shone a spotlight on the procurement sector here, it had been evident during the life of this administration and its earlier incarnations that the process has been seriously corrupted to enable the handing of contracts to the unqualified and invariably to allow supporters of the ruling party and their friends and family to benefit.
There was no sign from President Ali’s engagement with the media on Thursday that suggests his government intends a sea change in how the procurement system is governed. Approaching four years in office, a promised engineer’s act, which could help ensure that only the qualified can bid and be awarded contracts, remains lost in legislative wilderness and will certainly have no impact on the remainder of this term as is likely the plan. Without a fundamental commitment to transformation, the citizens of this country face the burden of contracts going to the unqualified who then subcontract the task to others as glorified middlemen and incurring costs beyond what are reasonable and worse – producing delayed, defective work that has to be rectified and/or redone to the detriment of the public purse.
OFAC homed in on the manner in which the Permanent Secretary of a ministry in this case – Home Affairs, a vital ministry in the security infrastructure – can influence awards.
“A corrupt Permanent Secretary could manipulate procurement processes to suit their preferred bidder by providing inside information at the early stages of evaluation. Access to a Per-manent Secretary of any Ministry could afford contractors insight into upcoming projects and bid values. Permanent Secretaries can act as the legal authority to sign contracts on behalf of their ministry”, OFAC stated.
The former Permanent Secretary of the Minis-try of Home Affairs, Mae Toussaint Jr Thomas is fully entitled to due process and must be considered innocent of the claims until found otherwise. The US has clearly invested much resources, time and intelligence assets in this operation. It arrived at the position that Toussaint Jr Thomas “used her position to offer benefits to Mohamed’s Enterprise and Azruddin (Mohamed), among others, in exchange for cash payments and high-value gifts. Thomas misused her position to influence the award of official contract bids and the approval processes for weapons permits and passports on behalf of Mohamed’s Enterprise.”
OFAC added that it is designating Ms Toussaint Jr Thomas “for being a foreign person who is a current or former government official, or a person acting for or on behalf of such an official, who is responsible for or complicit in, or has directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery”.
While OFAC did not identify specific contracts it would clearly had been referring to the award of the $614.5m Fire Service Headquarters contract on D’Urban Backlands and a section of major works at the Lusignan Prison to Mohamed’s Enterprise. The award of the contracts would have been surprising as the company had not engaged in construction of that scale.
Indeed, it did encounter problems. On March 15, 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs itself said that the new Fire Service HQ was behind schedule and defects had to be addressed.
The Ministry in a statement had noted a misleading article captioned, `Mohamed’s Enterprise delivers new $614.5M Fire Service HQ weeks ahead of schedule’, issued by I-News Guyana.
“The Ministry wishes to inform the public that on March 13, 2023, the keys to the new Fire Head-quarters were collected by Ministry officials based on a conditional acceptance since the contracting firm, Mohamed’s Enterprise, indicated they were ready to demobilize from the site, leaving it unoccupied.
“The acceptance of the keys allows for inspections on possible defects determination and for the eventual issuance of a practical completion certificate”, the ministry said.
It added that “The building was not completed weeks before schedule, as stated in the article, but rather is behind schedule and is currently at 95% completion.
“A punch list of defects was sent to the contractor’s representative, which has to be addressed within the (defects liability) period”, it added. It is unclear how matters were resolved in the end.
The Ali administration does not have to wait until the US government provides information which may never come at all. There is enough in the hearth for it to undertake its own probe.
All of the relevant documents are with the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). These should be pored over to determine whether the bid by Mohamed’s Enter-prise for the HQ and the Lusignan Prison nearly mirrored the engineer’s estimates, whether there is evidence that the bids evinced any sign that privileged information had been leaked and whether taking all criteria into account, the inexperienced Mohamed’s Enterprise could have beaten out other bidders.
That is work that can be done in a day or two and would provide a valuable reading on what transpired. However, is the government interested in this type of discovery or simply wants the tarnished system to continue rolling the way it is at the present? That would seem to be the case as even before the works of OFAC became known to the public, the scandal of the award of a pump station contract to Tepui Inc and its principal Mikhail Rodrigues had already been known to President Ali and the government. The authorities have however turned a blind eye to this. That must mean that there is an intent to let the corruption continue. It mustn’t be allowed to. Too much is at stake here in terms of money, risk to public safety and the corrupting of the public procurement system via the gaping holes that are now evident.
The awards of the pump station to Tepui Inc and the Bamia Primary School to St8ment Investment Inc underline how compromised the procurement system is. Undoubtedly awards are being made to deserved contractors. However, through nefarious acts at various levels corrupt awards are also being made.
The NPTAB and its proceedings come under the Ministry of Finance and the President has the ultimate responsibility. Public monies must not be used grease the wheels of corruption and illicit enrichment.
