We Want To See The Alutrint Accounts

We badly want to see the Alutrint accounts. We want to see it, like yesterday. Because Alutrint is careening into a quagmire of malfeasance and corruption. We want to see what the State has spent on Alutrint, what it will spend, and what it will gain. So far, we are seeing, from the basic economic data, that Alutrint will bust. Bust for the stakeholders of this project: the State and the people.

In April 2006, the head of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament called on individuals involved in Alutrint, which included Professor Ken Julien and his son the Project Manager (now Acting CEO), to appear before her. Mary King wanted to question them on the economic viability of Alutrint. They failed to appear.

In April 2007, Miss Rosanna Farmer, Dr Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh wrote to the Environmental Management Authority requesting “any cost benefit analysis” that they had considered in making their decision to certify Alutrint. The EMA refused to answer. The forcible ejection of Kublalsingh from the EMA and the subsequent 40 day fast in front of the building, by Farmer, Kublalsingh and many citizens, did not produce the Alutrint accounting.

In December 2007 Kublalsingh wrote a letter to the Corporation Sole, the Minister of Finance, responsible for the accounts of all state enterprises, calling for the Alutrint account. According to the State Enterprises Performance Monitoring Manual:

“Government has agreed that State Enterprises be required to publish in at least one (1) major daily newspaper a summary of the audited financial statements within four (4) months to the end of their financial year and a summary of the unaudited half-yearly statements within two (2) months of the mid-year date. Such summary statements must be in accordance with the requirements of the Securities Industry Act, 1995.” (Jan. 2008)

The letter to Nunez-Tesheira was published in the press at that time. So far there has been no answer to this letter. There has been no publication of the audited financial statements of Alutrint.

Between 2007 and 2008 Dr Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh wrote letters under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the costs and benefits of Alutrint. These letters were sent to the National Energy Corporation, the National Gas Company and the EMA. Official replies to these letters stated that the accounts of Alutrint were “confidential”. Vine and Kublalsingh were later thrown out of the NEC compound as they sought to see the Alutrint accounts. Kublalsingh was arrested by police.

On June 2009 the representatives of eight groups held a media conference in front of the Financial Towers of Port of Spain. They again called for the costs and benefits, the accounting sheet of Alutrint. They wrote letters to Professor Ken Julien, Energy Minister Conrad Enill (Alutrint’s line Minister) and Philip Julien (Acting CEO of Alutrint) requesting the costs and benefits of Alutrint. Today, after 26 days, there has been no response.

The citizens of the Republic will be paying Alutrint’s costs: port, power plant, smelter, gas subsidy, infrastructure, relocation, technical and legal consultancies, propaganda, raw materials and production; this will amount to tens of billions of dollars, not even taking into account severe health and ecological costs. Where are the profits?

The Chinese have granted us about 400 jobs for our citizens in the construction phase; their nationals will get over 1500. The downstream and marketing partner SURAL (owner of 40% of Alutrint) has pulled out of the project. Professor Julien, Minister Enill and Philip Julien cannot run Alutrint smelter, a company which has never even run a sno-cone cart. The Chinese will take over Alutrint and run it. We will bust, the Chinese will be the winners. The Chinese dragon will rise in the West, smoking our gas, our soil, our air, our dams, our river, our beach, our sea, our health, our money from its nostrils.

We want to see the Alutrint accounts. The perpetrators of Alutrint are planning to disappear, dissolve the huge economic costs of Alutrint. By blurring the accounting lines between Alutrint and other entities, they could claim a small financial gain at the end of the day. This must not be allowed to happen. This would be corruption, malfeasance, economic criminality. Finance Minister Mariano Browne, who now seems to be demanding fiduciary accountability from state enterprises, must order Alutrint to do its accounting. He must order Alutrint to publish, as stipulated by regulation and law, its audited accounts.

Wayne Kublalsingh

(Used with his permission)