Investigations into a multimillion-dollar payout made by former justice minister Herbert Volney has reached the desk of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
The Joint Consultative Council (JCC), led by Afra Raymond, is currently spearheading the call for Volney to answer questions about an initial $3.02 million payment made to a single contractor for “professional services” on September 27, 2011, on the billion-dollar Judicial Centre Project.
The JCC is alleging that there were several contraventions to the law while the Minister of Justice was attempting to start construction on four judicial centres.
Three days before Volney was removed from office in 2012, the JCC met and spoke with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and in an ensuing letter, they broached the topic of the judicial centres. In that letter to the PM, the JCC stated that Volney had breached three rules including that the commissions for the design of the centres were never publicly advertised, that he paid more than the $1 million ministerial limit, and that the US-based company that was retained was not registered.
The JCC, in 2012, also alerted the Integrity Commission of the possible breaches made by Volney in the award of that payment for professional services, citing the illegality surrounding the award of that contract. The US-based company, according to the documents forwarded to the Integrity Commission by the JCC, was retained to provide architectural designs for the billion-dollar project.
“Our assertion as to the illegality of the contract/s is based on the fact that Central Tenders Board which has sole responsibility for contracting in these situations, was circumvented.”
A response from the commission, dated January 23, 2015, stated that the completed investigation has been referred to DPP Gaspard.
The Sunday Guardian understands that Gaspard is expected to the give the JCC an update on his investigation by next week.
The JCC’s chief concern, which has been detailed in a series of letters to the Integrity Commission, the DPP, and the Central Tenders Board (CTB), is that Volney not only bypassed the Central Tenders Board in order to make that $3 million payment, but also overstepped the $1 million limit normally allowed to ministers.
The JCC also alerted the Central Tenders Board of Volney’s alleged breach of its own regulations, informing them that the CTB was bypassed in order for Volney to make the $3.02 million payment. Within days, the CTB responded to the JCC describing the issue as a “serious one.” In that letter, also obtained by the Sunday Guardian, the CTB states that the information raised by the JCC was sent to the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance for investigation, as the CTB does not possess the ability to conduct any such investigation.
According to documents received by the Sunday Guardian, the JCC cited the Hansard of Friday 11, 2014, when Volney’s replacement, Senator Emmanuel George gave some indication of the true cost of the judicial complex during his contribution to that parliamentary sitting. It was during George’s contribution that it was confirmed that four proposed centres would cost $1.73 billion.
JCC: We want back the money
In a brief interview, Raymond confirmed that the JCC raised its concerns with Volney through meetings and letters and is now calling on the US-based firm to return the payment to the country. Raymond said there were “two plain cases of lawbreaking by public officials in this case.”
“The engagement of Houston-based professionals to design the proposed judicial centres. Those professionals, engineers and architects, were not registered to practice in our country, as required by law, and the expenditure of over $3 million in public money in a sole-selective award to those unregistered professionals. That sum of money exceeds the $1 million limit set on spending by ministerial committees of the CTB, so that is yet another illegal act,” he said. He said the JCC was unrelenting in this matter and would continue to “press for the public officials who authorised these illegal acts to be identified, charged and prosecuted so that proper standards of conduct in public office could be restored.”
“The JCC is also pressing for those professional fees, charged by unregistered professionals and in breach of our country's laws, be returned to the treasury,” he said.
He described the delays as “brazen impunity” and called for the new Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act (No 1 of 2015) to be implemented urgently.
Background
In May 2011 Volney had been directed by Cabinet to begin the process for construction of four judicial centres to alleviate the backlog within the court system. He had gotten to the architectural stage, retained a US-based firm to help conceptualise and design the four buildings—one in Carlsen Field at a cost of $575,500, another in Siparia at a cost of $276,842,484, a third in Sangre Grande at a cost of $655 million, and the fourth as a family court in Trincity, costing $218,216,000. Volney was fired by Persad-Bissessar on September 20, 2012 and the project was stalled. By 2013, then Justice Minister Christlyn Moore announced that the four centres were on hold. The centres continue to remain on the back burner.
Former justice minister: I did nothing wrong
Former justice Minister Herbert Volney, who stepped down as a High Court Judge to enter politics, yesterday said he “did nothing wrong” in the entire process and had Cabinet approval to make the $3 million payment to the Houston-based architectural firm.
In response to questions from the Sunday Guardian, Volney yesterday said that as the then minister of justice, he forwarded to the Cabinet a “blue print of a judicial complex prepared free of charge by expert court construction architects of Houston.”
“There was no formal engagement until after Cabinet had agreed (to) approach the firm for use of its prototype in the open tendering process,” Volney said.
“The later $3 million (TT) payment was approved by Cabinet so that the Cabinet approved prototype could be used as a reference document in the Request For Proposals on a Design Finance Construct Transfer basis. I did not do anything wrong.”
Volney insisted that the work done by the firm was only to help Cabinet conceptualise the idea behind the four judicial centres.
“It was to assist Cabinet in deciding if to move forward with my note to decentralise by building four judicial centres in different regions rather than one ten-storey building in Trincity,” Volney said.
He said the Architects Association, which falls under the ambit of the JCC, took objection to this even though there was not yet any Cabinet decision to build anything.
“For accepting the help of foreign architects who were able to get the prototype suggestive blue print free of charge in the shortest period, the Integrity Commission sent the matter to the DPP to advise on whether I committed a criminal act,” he said.