Akash Sama­roo

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s (OW­TU) Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed is de­mand­ing that the bid­ding process to ac­quire the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery be scrapped due to what it al­leged reeks of gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence.

It said the bid­ding process should be an in­de­pen­dent one.

Pa­tri­ot­ic is al­so chal­leng­ing the En­er­gy Min­is­ter to make his fraud al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main, away from the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

Yes­ter­day, mo­ments af­ter Min­is­ter Stu­art Young claimed Pa­tri­ot­ic was yet to ad­dress his as­ser­tion that the com­pa­ny at­tempt­ed to buy the Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery us­ing a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment, the com­pa­ny fired back with its third me­dia re­lease in two days.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Young told Guardian Me­dia, that in spite of two me­dia re­leas­es from the com­pa­ny on Sat­ur­day, “Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies has NOT an­swered, nor have they ad­dressed the is­sue of pro­vid­ing a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment pur­port­ing to be a wire trans­fer of US$1.5 bil­lion.”

And while Pa­tri­ot­ic had ini­tial­ly told Guardian Me­dia that it be­lieved the min­is­ter’s con­cerns were ad­dressed in its me­dia re­leas­es on Sat­ur­day, a few hours lat­er Pa­tri­ot­ic re­spond­ed to Young yet again.

This time in a me­dia re­lease ti­tled, Pa­tri­ot­ic De­mands’ the scrap­ping of the un­fair, bi­ased and taint­ed bid process, Pa­tri­ot­ic said, “the state­ment made by Mr Young was mis­lead­ing, mis­chie­vous, and acute­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to jus­ti­fy Pa­tri­ot­ic be­ing de­nied be­ing se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der.”

Giv­en what was said in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, Pa­tri­ot­ic said it, “is of the clear per­cep­tion that there was min­is­te­r­i­al over­reach and in­ter­fer­ence in what was sup­posed to be an in­de­pen­dent process.”

Ac­cord­ing to its lat­est me­dia re­lease, Pa­tri­ot­ic is now de­mand­ing that there be, “the im­me­di­ate scrap­ping and a com­plete re­do­ing of the en­tire bid­ding process in the in­ter­est of fair­ness, trans­paren­cy, equal­i­ty in treat­ment and in­de­pen­dence of gov­ern­men­tal in­ter­fer­ence.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic re­it­er­at­ed what was sent in its sec­ond re­sponse to Young which was de­liv­ered late Sat­ur­day evening.

Pa­tri­ot­ic said in May it sub­mit­ted a non-bind­ing pro­pos­al iden­ti­fy­ing three po­ten­tial fi­nanciers. How­ev­er, in Au­gust it elim­i­nat­ed all three af­ter do­ing its own due dili­gence where it could not sub­stan­ti­ate the fi­nanciers’ proof of funds. It claimed a new fi­nancier was sent to Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al for con­sid­er­a­tion by the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee han­dling the sale of the re­fin­ery.

Pa­tri­ot­ic went on to say that lat­er in Au­gust, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­pa­ny along with the new fi­nan­cial part­ner met with the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and pre­sent­ed its fi­nan­cial plan. It said no con­cerns were raised by the com­mit­tee and un­der­scored that at no time did it sub­mit any doc­u­ments from the three for­mer po­ten­tial fi­nanciers. There­fore, Pa­tri­ot­ic said what­ev­er doc­u­ment the min­is­ter bran­dished in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day to sup­port his claim that a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment was sent to the com­mit­tee is “to­tal­ly ir­rel­e­vant.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic be­lieves with that clar­i­fi­ca­tion now in the pub­lic do­main, the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee should re­verse its de­ci­sion and re­assess its doc­u­men­ta­tion, thus al­low­ing them to re­main in con­tention to own and op­er­ate the re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, in re­sponse to that Min­is­ter Young claimed the com­pa­ny was still evad­ing the main is­sue and should un­am­bigu­ous­ly state if there was ever a doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by them to the com­mit­tee that in­di­cat­ed a pur­port­ed wire trans­fer of $USD1.5 bil­lion.

Young said, “Con­sid­er the im­pli­ca­tions of such a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment in sup­port of fi­nan­cial where­with­al and ask your­self what are the con­se­quences of such an ac­tion and fake doc­u­ment. What would you do?”

Mean­while Pa­tri­ot­ic said it once again, “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and ve­he­ment­ly re­jects the min­is­ter’s state­ment as down­right ma­li­cious vex­a­tious and patent­ly mis­lead­ing aimed at in­jur­ing and in­flict­ing harm to Pa­tri­ot­ic’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic is now chal­leng­ing Min­is­ter Young, “to re­move him­self from the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege and state in the pub­lic do­main that Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments for eval­u­a­tion to the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.”

Last Fri­day Min­is­ter Young said he was pre­pared to make these state­ments out­side of Par­lia­ment.

Pa­tri­ot­ic con­clud­ed its lat­est state­ment by say­ing, “Pa­tri­ot­ic wish­es to state that on all oc­ca­sions, in­clud­ing in the last non-bind­ing bid process; that Pa­tri­ot­ic is ab­solute­ly con­fi­dent that the com­pa­ny met the re­quire­ments and, there­fore, for yet an­oth­er time, stands ready and able to de­liv­er the restart and op­er­a­tion of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery for the ben­e­fit of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

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 Oan­do PLC.

These se­lec­tions were made by Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) and an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.