60 charges for Ish,

Last year, the Grand Jury indicted Galbaransingh and Ferguson on a number of charges. Last Thursday, the entire Grand Jury indictment was released in Florida, detailing 84 counts with the two Trinidadians charged jointly or separately with 60.

Galbaransingh, owner of Northern Construction Limited and Ferguson, chairman of Maritime Insurance Company, are two of the persons charged in Trinidad with several offences arising out of the construction of the $1.6 billion Piarco Airport Terminal building project. The first preliminary inquiry continues this morning. Apart from the 84 charges laid, the US Government is seeking to recover US$33.5 million (TT $210 million). Several other defendants were named in the indictment including Raul Gutierrez, Eduardo Hillman-Waller, Northern Construction and Calmaquip Engineering, who are charged in the second Piarco Airport corruption case in Trinidad. The others are Rene Diaz De Villegas, vice-president of Calmaquip, Armando Paz, Chief Financial Officer, of Calmaquip, Richard Lacle, resident of Aruba, and Leonardo Arturo Mora-Rodriguez, a national of Colombia.

It is alleged that the defendants in September 1996, did knowingly conspire with each other to commit certain offences against the United States, namely:

(a) to transmit and cause to be transmitted, by means of wire communications, certain writings, signs, signals, pictures and sounds for the purpose of executing a scheme and artifice to defraud and to obtain money and property from others by means of materially false and fraudulent pretences, representations and promises, knowing that the pretences, representations and promises were false and fraudulent.

(b) to knowingly transport, transmit, and transfer in interstate and foreign commerce money, of the value of US $5,000 or more knowing it to have been taken by fraud.

According to the indictment, the defendants are accused of conspiracy. “The purpose of the conspiracy was to defraud the TT Government by manipulating the bid process for certain Piarco Airport construction packages so the defendants and their related companies would unjustly enrich themselves through the receipt of proceeds from excessively inflated contracts and to transfer those proceeds to foreign accounts in order to conceal and disguise the nature and location of those proceeds,” the indictment added.

It is further alleged that Galbaransingh and Ferguson used their political and economic influence to manipulate and control the bidding and selection process for the construction of the new terminal building.

The Grand Jury alleges that the defendants, together with officers and agents of SDC and SDCC, would arrange for SDC to submit a fraudulent and excessive bid for Package 9, so that the overpriced bid submitted by Northern Construction would be accepted.

(SDC is an international construction firm headquartered outside the US. Neither Calmaquip nor SDC disclosed that SDC’s US subsidiary, SDCC, shared corporate officers, directors and business location with Calmaquip.)