Guardian Media Ltd and pollster Louis Bertrand have both rubbished a report in yesterday’s Trinidad Express that questioned whether the firm under which Bertrand traded, H.H.B & Associates, was still in existence and functional.
The Express reported that “concerns have been raised over the legitimacy of H.H.B (H.H.B) & Associates, which GML has hired to conduct election polls, as it has been listed as dissolved and void on the Company’s (Companies) Registry.”
The Express claimed a check of the Registry “found that the status of H.H.B & Associates was listed as “struck off and dissolved.”
However, a quick online search by GML turned up Bertrand’s company registration, and a representative of the company was able to, within minutes of going to the Registry, retrieve copies of H.H.B’s Certificate of Incorporation, its annual returns and other listed documents.
GML Managing Director Lisa Agard yesterday said she was disturbed that the Express did not do its homework on the matter.
“It is rather regrettable in this age, where so much information is available online, that journalists don’t do their jobs properly, and get in hand documents that literally took me five minutes to do on the internet – 90 pages of documents on this company,” she said.
“As part of our due diligence, and in fact part of our process for payment, we do require our suppliers to give us certificates of incorporation, as well as VAT certificates of registration.”
Bertrand yesterday also dismissed the report as a “red herring,” telling the T&T Guardian that H.H.B & Associates, which was first incorporated as a partnership in 1991, was dissolved four years later on April 20, 1995, and on May 18, H.H.B & Associates Ltd was formed as a limited liability company with the same directors. The new company has been in operation “ever since,” he added.
He said people were not finding the company on the registry because they were not inserting the correct company name, which is H.H.B & Associates Ltd, not H.H.B.
“We are a company, we are registered, we have done work for every major corporation, including the Express,” he told the T&T Guardian yesterday.
Work for all parties
Questions about the legitimacy of the company first emerged on social media.
Bertrand said he had seen the posts, which claimed that the Guardian had hired a defunct company to say that the Opposition and Rowley were ahead of the PP and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
“On investigation, the misleading information seems to have come from a blogger who seems to be upset by a poll finding for Tunapuna that suggests that Dr Rowley has drawn level with Mrs Kamla Persad Bissessar in approval ratings.”
He said it seemed the real issue was that PP activists were upset with the result of the poll.
“So obviously that was the issue (and) I fail completely to see how whether we are registered or not has anything to do with the poll. Is the accuracy of the poll dependent on if I am registered?” he said.
“We have VAT certificate, we have BIR number and we have the whole story.”
Previously, he said, the firm had done “political polls” for the PNM, United National Congress, Independent Liberal Party and Congress of the People.
Other executive directors of the company are former chairman of the disbanded BWIA, Ian Bertrand, and Martin Franklin.
The T&T Guardian a day earlier published a front page story based on Bertrand’s sample poll in the marginal Tunapuna constituency. The findings were also presented on CNC3’s On The Margin on Tuesday evening.
The poll showed that electors were returning to the People’s National Movement and that its leader Dr Keith Rowley was slightly ahead of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar as the better leader. (See election poll pullout inside).
Tunapuna is among eight marginal constituencies sampled by the firm for the 2015 general election, constitutionally due by September. Some 300 people were interviewed by the pollster over two weeks ago.