PNM financier on Seajets selection: I was not involved

Suspended PNM member and financier Harry Ragoonanan has denied that he is an agent of Seajets Ferries which placed five tenders to provide a ferry for the seabridge and failed to win the bid.

“I have been identified as the agent or perceived to be the agent of Seajet. I am not. I am in the boat business,” he said.

He was surprised, too, he told Newsday yesterday, to learn that the Greece-based Seajets Ferries which purportedly had the three best bids and was recommended by the Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (PATT) to Cabinet to provide the service, was not accepted.

He said, sources close to PATT have told him that because of the perception that he was Seajets’ agent, Government did not accept PATT’s tender committee’s recommendations.

Efforts to contact PATT chairman Alison Lewis yesterday were unsuccessful. When contacted on Thursday, she said, she could not speak at the time. Asked why Government would perceive he was Seajets’ agent, Ragoonanan said, “Initially when Government was looking for boats, I contacted people I deal with in the shipping industry abroad. They recommended five vessels. Of those I selected one which I thought fit the specifications they were looking for. That was the Tera Jet and I asked the owners, Seajets to tender the boat. They did.”

PATT was considering the boat favourably, he said. “I was told that a senior official of the Government told them not to have anything to do with that boat because the person who supplied the boat was me. I don’t know who told them that. They discontinued the negotiation which was at an advanced stage for the vessel to travel to Trinidad and Tobago. It was cancelled.”

Asked why he got involved in the first instance, he said. “I know the business and my party is in Government and I was just trying to assist in getting a good vessel.”

Seajets are the number one suppliers of fast ferries, he claimed. “They are very reputable and are not a fly-by-night company.”

When PATT advertised for tenders recently, Ragoonanan said, “I made no recommendations to anyone. There were 11 tenders, five of which were from Seajets.”

He was told from sources close to the PATT, he said, that again, Seajets Ferries was ranked first, second and third, with Bridgeman’s Services, the owner of the Ocean Flower, fourth.

“They were in fact submitted and recommended to Cabinet by way of a letter, the pages of which were signed by every member of the committee. I am now hearing that the minister saying that the port could not recommend any boat and that the tender had failed and they cancelled the tender. I am not involved, but I understand they called my name. That is why they scrapped the tender process.”

What was even more surprising, he said, was the appointment of a Cabinet selection committee.

“That is unheard of. I don’t know if you know any Cabinet minister going out to source a vessel or anything for that matter, and a contract of this size. If that is not corruption, I don’t know what is. Politicians are not supposed to get involved in any procurement process,” he said adding, “A ministerial committee to go looking for vessels, I wish them luck.”

Meanwhile, former transport minister Devant Maharaj told Newsday that the names of those who recommended Seajets were experts in the maritime industry compared to ministers of the Government who had no expertise at all.

“Given the track record of Finance Minister Colm Imbert who selected the MV Sue which never sailed a day in Trinidad and Tobago and for which $54 million was spent,” he said, was a matter for concern.