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Govt launches probe into AATT kiosk contract

US $510,000 a month for sev­en years.

That cost and time frame for a con­tract en­tered in­to by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T board and No­vo Tech­nol­o­gy In­cor­po­ra­tion Ltd—for sup­ply of au­to­mat­ed im­mi­gra­tion kiosks—has raised “red flags” for Gov­ern­ment, which has or­dered a probe of the con­tract.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced for­mer Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son will probe the mat­ter and re­port in two months.

Young said part of the con­tract which al­so both­ers Gov­ern­ment con­cerns con­tract ter­mi­na­tion. This will re­quire the State to pay the com­pa­ny the month­ly cost for all sev­en years of the deal—a to­tal of al­most US $43 mil­lion.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Young con­firmed a PNM-ap­point­ed AATT board—but not the cur­rent board—was in­volved.

“The con­tract has very oner­ous terms. We saw mas­sive red flags and need to ask ‘why did you en­ter this con­tract and on whose au­thor­i­ty did you en­ter it’,” he said.

“I’m not say­ing any­thing was done wrong by the board, but red flags have been raised and from de­ci­sions, we’ve seen it looks as though there may be cir­cum­stances in the en­ter­ing in­to of the con­tract we’re not com­fort­able with—cer­tain­ly the terms we’re not com­fort­able with.”

He said the State hasn’t paid the full US $510,000 month­ly fee for the au­to­mat­ed pass­port kiosks, “so they (com­pa­ny) are claim­ing we owe them.”

Young said Cab­i­net was un­aware of the con­tract which was signed in 2017 and a sup­ple­men­tal con­tract signed in March 2018. He said it ap­peared the ini­tial in­volve­ment on the is­sue might have been through the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, but it ap­peared there was no in­volve­ment of the Works Min­is­ter, un­der whose purview AATT falls. Young, who be­came Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in Au­gust 2018, said he was un­aware of the sit­u­a­tion and had re­cent­ly asked im­mi­gra­tion about the kiosks.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, who was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2018, did not re­ply to calls yes­ter­day.

Young ex­plained the “red flags” went up when it be­came ap­par­ent the con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed be­tween AATT and the com­pa­ny for in­stal­la­tion of the kiosks for Pi­ar­co and To­ba­go’s air­ports. The con­tract was first en­tered in­to on De­cem­ber 15, 2017 and a sup­ple­men­tal con­tract in March 2018.

Kiosks were launched in 2018 and used on a vol­un­tary ba­sis.

He said the AATT ap­proached the Works Min­istry for fi­nanc­ing for pay­ment for the con­tract and Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan then raised is­sues with the Fi­nance Min­istry, ask­ing for Fi­nance’s Cen­tral Au­dit unit to ex­am­ine the pro­cure­ment and ten­der­ing process­es.

Cab­i­net ap­point­ed Young, Sinanan and Fi­nance’s Colm Im­bert to re-ex­am­ine doc­u­men­ta­tion sur­round­ing the is­sue.

Young said cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the first con­tract and the “strange” sup­ple­men­tal one in 2018 mer­it­ed ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Young said: “We have se­ri­ous con­cerns with ex­pen­di­ture of this sum. The US $510,000 month­ly fee would al­so be just over TT $3 mil­lion month­ly—TT $40 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

“But AATT wouldn’t have got­ten pro­gram­ming rights to the kiosks af­ter pay­ing for sev­en years. Most as­tound­ing, ATTT didn’t have arrange­ments to cov­er fi­nan­cial pay­ments. Our team ad­vised Cab­i­net it was un­ac­cept­able.”

He said an air­port tax was pro­posed to cov­er the kiosk cost but by the time the con­tract was en­tered in­to there was no law in place to make kiosks manda­to­ry.

Young said rec­om­men­da­tions on the is­sue made to Cab­i­net were ap­proved yes­ter­day. The Works Min­istry will now seek in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice on the con­tract, le­gal oblig­a­tions by AATT and the state and how the process start­ed.

Works’ le­gal team re­cent­ly met an in­de­pen­dent coun­sel re­tained on the mat­ter. He didn’t give cost of the coun­sel but added le­gal fees would nev­er be the $1.4 bil­lion paid dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s tenure.

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Image:  E. I. Sanchez (flickr)