(Trinidad Guardian) In a shocking revelation in Parliament yesterday, Energy Minister Stuart Young claimed the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union’s (OWTU) Patriotic Energies Company Limited failed to make the next round of bidding on the mothballed Petrotrin refinery because it lied about its financial standing by submitting a fake document to the evaluation committee tasked with receiving proposals.
Young made the comment a day after OWTU president general Ancel Roget, at a media conference, suggested the Government was acting spitefully by rejecting Patriotic.
Speaking in yesterday’s Budget debate, however, Minister Young described Roget’s remarks as “reckless.”
Providing context before revealing what he said was the real reason the company was not considered, he explained, “One of the things looked at, not us the Government, the evaluation committee and Scotia out of Houston, who are independent experts in this area, there were a number of things they look at. Any experience in refining? Any experience in oil? Another one is do you have the financial wherewithal?”
Reaching for a document in front of him, Young said, “You know things arrive in your mailbox.”
He then brandished a piece of paper to the Lower House, declaring, “I have in my hand here today what appears to be a swift message of a cash wire transfer of USD$1.5 billion on behalf of Patriotic Energies and Technology Company Limited, receiving USD$1.5 billion at a local bank in Trinidad.”
The Energy Minister said the Government asked the evaluation committee what was the issue with Patriotic’s bid if the company showed it had that sum of money in its account.
“So, of course, we asked the evaluation committee ‘well, if they had this what happened?’ Fraudulent document. A fake document produced as part of that EOI (expression of interest) process. Forged document, because when the due diligence was done, of course, no USD$1.5 billion was received by Patriotic at any local bank. So, unfortunately, and yes, it is stamped by some unknown person, certified true, but, of course, it is easy to certify this,” Young claimed while those on the Government audibly expressed their shock at the disclosure.
Young said he was so confident in the documentation he was provided with that he was willing to repeat what he said in public, where he does not have parliamentary privilege.
“Because it is either it exists or does not exist. And I can stand here without fear of contradiction here and outside, as I might do later on, and say it is not a real document. So therefore, unfortunately, they could not move forward because the document that was produced as proof of financials is not real. Fake, fraud, fraudulent and that Mr Deputy Speaker, through you to the population, is the truth as to why Patriotic could not make it to the next hurdle,” he proclaimed.
Earlier on, Young said Patriotic was, in fact, even given preferential treatment by the evaluation committee.
“The question was asked; did they pass the financials? I was told by the evaluation committee, the first time, no, they could not produce the financial wherewithal on this occasion as part of their EOI process. And the evaluation committee did something, credit to them, that they didn’t do for others, they told Patriotic take some time and go and see if you can get the financials because what you produced as the initial pass can’t work. And they gave them more time and they gave them a second opportunity,” Young explained.
He said it was on this second opportunity that the alleged fake document was submitted.
Further attempting to support the claim that Patriotic was not victimised by the Government, Young said, “The first time we went out in 2018/2019, Patriotic Energies, an OWTU-formed company, was the preferred bidder. We gave them a period of exclusivity, they could not, unfortunately, get over the hurdle even though we worked with them.
“There were two things, one was that one of their partners wanted exclusivity to the Paria tank farms, we weren’t prepared to do that, the second was they wanted Government to issue bonds on their behalf as part of the financing, that is putting the taxpayers right back where we had taken them out from.”
Minister Young argued that while any responsible government would want to restart the refinery, they were not going to put taxpayers in a position where they were incurring billions of dollars in losses as a result.
The chosen bidders for the refinery were also revealed by the Finance Minister during the Budget presentation and include CRO Consortium, a Trinidad-based group made up of DR Commodities Ltd, Chemie-Tech and Ocala; US-based iNca Energy LLC; and Nigeria-based Dando PLC. These selections were made by Scotia Capital (USA) and an evaluation committee.
Union to respond today
Efforts to contact Roget and OWTU Chief Education Officer Ozzi Warwick for a comment on Young’s claim yesterday were unsuccessful. However, Stacy Herbert, of the Education and Research Department, last evening said they would respond today.