AL RAWI, NELSON AND $3 B WGTL WASTE

CONSIDER how much $3 billion could do for the people, especially during this guava season. 

With the cost of food climbing each week ($196 for a single pumpkin!) and joblessness at almost 20 per cent, $3 billion could put food on the table for thousands of suffering people. 

That sum was “equivalent to two airports,” according to Lindsay Gillette a decade ago while he was chairman of Petrotrin and mopping up the scandalous World Gas-to-Liquids (WGTL) project. 

Malcolm Jones as Petrotrin boss during the Patrick Manning Government jumped into the WGTL project against solid documented advice from senior company engineers and other professionals. 

In a bizarre business contrivance, Petrotrin was liable for virtually all the financial capital while holding a minority 49 per cent of the company’s shares. 

The inevitable collapse of the costly and ill-advised project and all the legal escapades are well known. 

But the Faris Al Rawi-Vincent Nelson nexus is still relevant – and troubling – today. 

After the venture went belly-up, the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration sued Jones for breach of fiduciary duties in approving $109.4 million in cost overruns. 

The government acted on the advice of Nelson and Russell Martineau, the latter a former Attorney General. 

In a stunning flip-flop, the same Nelson later advised the newly-elected Rowley Government that the case could not be won.  

The matter was withdrawn in an almost clandestine manner, with no one – not even the Petrotrin Board of Directors – taking responsibility. 

In its stark ruling, the Privy Council said there were “some grounds for thinking” there was politics in the decision to abandon the case. 

In other words, the government had interfered in a sensitive legal matter. 

By then, the Rowley regime had rehabilitated Jones as a member of a top-ranking energy committee and had restored his standing, even with the $3 billion stench trailing him. 

The outrageous WGTL misspending was one reason for the eventual dimming of the Petrotrin lights. 

Hardly bothered by the disgraceful waste of taxpayers’ money, the government sold the unfinished plant at a peppercorn price. 

“Not only is the public being forced to accept that no one would be held accountable for the scandalous waste of public funds,” the Express newspaper wrote at the time, “but that critical public resources will once again go into it under a highly opaque deal.”   

In typical brazen manner, Al Rawi assailed all critics, while Prime Minister Rowley dismissed the WGTL disaster as “a business deal that went bad.” 

The nation’s leader is clearly not affected by the shameful loss of taxpayers’ $3 billion. 

And he has not properly accounted on the sale of the plant; the government was “shockingly evasive on the facts,” the Express said. 

Instead, the government continued to play ball with the scandal-scarred Nelson on a matter involving tens of millions of dollars on a fishing expedition against political opponents. 

Like all other local financial scandals involving the public purse dating back to Gene Miles, the culprits, political decision-makers and their high-priced advisors simply dusted off the $3B WGTL waste. 

Nelson’s role in this scorcher – along with the raging Ramlogan-Ramdeen disgrace – would be incomprehensible in a land in which the rule of law is properly honoured. 

There would also be relentless public agitation against the authorities. 

Instead, there are muted criticisms, with keyboard warriors tapping out predictable texts, while their detached foot soldiers are still busily posting selfies.  

In the meantime, the people’s money continues to gush like a burst pipe.  

And the poor and hungry are reduced to begging in public.