Dear Editor,
The President of the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world receives an annual salary of US$400K or TT$2.72 Million.
In comparison, Rowley’s handpicked “lobbyist” in Washington, his friend and PNM supporter Art Collins’s firm GroupDC has been receiving US$100K per month or US$1,200,000.00 annually since October 2016 and to-date, Collins’s firm has been paid by TT taxpayers US$8,900,000.00 Million or TT$60,520,000.00.
GroupDC was awarded a contract to be TT’s Lobbyists in Washington DC on October 31, 2016. GroupDC registered with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) as TT’s Lobbyists on October 28 2016 (Reg# 6388), three days before they “received” the contract from the Rowley-led PNM Administration.
Trinidad and Tobago it appears has an “official” Ambassador in Washington as well as a “parallel” unofficial Ambassador in Collins.
This is the PNM way of doling out lucrative contracts to their friends and supporters.
And it has been happening with many past PNM-led Administrations. The PNM has a penchant for appointing its close friends and allies as Lobbyists for the GORTT in Washington. In 1993, the first Manning-led Administration awarded a lobbyist contract valued at US$300,000.00 (TT$2,044,000.0) to Holland & Knight. Vicky-Anne Asservero, a partner at this firm, was married to former PNM Minister Wendel Mottley.
In 2005, the second Manning-led Administration awarded a similar contract valued at US$7,500,000.00 (TT$51,108,000.00) to Ainsley Gill and Associates.
Gill is of course the founder and “Chief Visionary Officer(?)” of NiQuan, … a blighted Project which at its official opening in March 2021, Keith Rowley was hailing NiQuan’s Gas-to-Liquid plant as “a prime example of the successful development of the country’s export potential of higher value-added products, through collaboration of the private sector, the banking sector and the Government.” Less than month after this pronouncement by Rowley, a massive explosion rocked the plant and NiQuan was forced to halt operations.
NiQuan’s plant, located in Point a Pierre, went offline last September and is now in default of its US$150,000,000 million facility. NiQuan owes hundreds of millions to financiers in T&T – among them banks and credit unions and investment companies. Even the Government (taxpayers), through Petrotrin, has preference shares in NiQuan.
NiQuan is now a “triumph” which is haunting the PNM!
And Rowley has never told the country about any single tangible benefit that TT has had from GroupDC’s representation in the USA. But then again, this is the consistent pattern of the PNM’s management of taxpayers’ money; every agreement, every contract is done under the cloak of non-disclosure agreements!
Yours truly,
Capil Bissoon