00:00Three days after Energy Minister Stuart Young told the Parliament the reason the
00:04oilfields workers trade union owned Patriotic's second bid to restart the
00:09state-owned oil refinery in Pointe-a-Pierre failed was due to what he
00:13identified as a fake banking document Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Limited
00:17TPHL issued a statement to the media. TPHL replaced Petrotrin as the
00:23state-owned oil company in late 2018 and has four subsidiaries including the
00:29company responsible for selecting a preferred bidder for the sale or lease
00:33of the refinery. TPHL said on Tuesday that it is in receipt of a document
00:39submitted by Patriotic Energy Services Company Limited in furtherance of its
00:43non-binding offer for the Guaracara refinery. TPHL said the document was
00:49specifically identified as evidence of a wire transfer of 1.5 billion United
00:55States dollars into a local bank with Patriotic Energies and Technology
01:00Company Limited as the beneficiary. TPHL further said information to hand
01:06suggests that there was no such transfer and that accordingly the said document
01:12has been referred to the company's legal advisors and the relevant authorities
01:16for advice including whether any offense has been committed and thereafter to
01:22take whatever further action may be warranted. Patriotic Energy issued a
01:27statement in response to TPHL. Patriotic said it is receiving legal advice and is
01:33exploring all its legal options. In the House of Representatives on Tuesday
01:38Oropuch East MP Dr. Rudal Munilal read TPHL's statement into the
01:43Parliament's records during his contribution to the budget debate. He
01:47made reference to the Evaluation Committee. We thank them for their
01:51service but I'm not seeing anywhere there Trinidad Petroleum holding. In
01:55fact I'm not even seeing the minister's name here as part of the Evaluation
01:59Committee. How did the minister got wind of a wire transfer involving an
02:05impartial and independent Evaluation Committee? MP Munilal called on the
02:10Energy Minister to provide an answer. Did you enter the room of the Evaluation
02:14Committee? By accident you were in Whitehall and you entered the wrong room
02:20and they were looking at documents that Patriotic submitted? How did this happen?
02:26And how did Trinidad Holdings Limited get a copy of these documents?
02:32Confidential documents meant for Scotia International and meant for the
02:37Evaluation Committee? How it works Madam Speaker is when you send your documents
02:41to the Evaluation Committee if they believe that something is amiss and so
02:45on they have a duty to take it up with the authorities. To take it with the
02:52authorities. Politicians don't get involved in that. Later in the debate
02:56National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hines responded directly to Dr. Munilal.
03:02Madam Speaker the member for Oropooch East commented on and wondering how I
03:09mean Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Limited would have had knowledge of the
03:17evaluation. It is their asset. When we restructure Petrochain that holding
03:24company holds the assets and liabilities as new companies were set up to carry on
03:30profitably. They are entitled to those documents and they have it so he could
03:35waste his time if it pleases him. Patriotic Energy said it carefully
03:39observed that quote TPHL in their statement has purposely and conveniently
03:44not stated the date they claimed the document was submitted unquote. Patriotic
03:50said the line minister of TPHL has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring
03:54that the said non-binding bid process remains independent and insulated from
03:59any political bias ministerial overreach and or interference. Patriotic said that
04:04in the interest of fairness transparency and equality and treatment
04:08to all it again calls for the total scrapping and redoing of what it calls
04:13the compromised non-binding bid process. Jewel Brown TV6 News
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