By Svetlana Marshall

INQUIRIES into the $16.5M budgeted in 2015 for the purchase of a vehicle for Attorney-General and Legal Affairs Minister, Basil William ignited a heated exchange in the Parliamentary Committee of Supply on Tuesday, with the subject Minister crying ‘fraud’.

His predecessor, Anil Nandlall had raised an alarm at the level of the Committee of Supply on hearing that a further $6.5M was allocated in this year’s budget for the purchase of yet another vehicle for him.
But as Minister Williams painstakingly explained, the $16.5M transaction had to be cancelled because it was fraught with inaccuracies.
Said he, “Mr. Chairman, that transaction that the Honourable Member refers to was a transaction designed to defraud the State of its revenues; and if it weren’t for the vigilance of the current Attorney-General, Sir, our revenues would have been depleted.”
Williams said that during the initial stages of the transaction, he was under the impression that the vehicle being purchased was new.
But on closer inspection of the vehicle, while it was still at the wharf, he and his staff soon came to realise that what they were looking at was a reconditioned vehicle and not a ‘brand new baby’.
As such, he is now maintaining that that transaction had been hatched long before he took office.
But Nandlall, pulling a classic ‘Shaggy’, is saying it wasn’t he; that rather it must have been Williams who was trying to pull a fast one, as when he signed the draft 2015 budget, it did not include money for a vehicle.
At this, Minister Williams immediately took to his feet, “on a point of order,” saying: “As a green Minister, I had no idea whatsoever about procedures for procurement and the like; and I can’t say that for the former Attorney-General, and I am saying…arrangements were already in place when I became Minister of Legal Affairs to perpetrate this act upon the State.”
He said that it was because of this apparent attempt to defraud the State that he took the decision to retrieve the $8.2M that had already been paid to the importer and transferred it to the Ministry of Finance.
But as Bishop Juan Edghill, who rose to defend his colleague, argued, since the $16.5M was no longer used to purchase the vehicle, then it should have been reflected in the budget estimates under the Ministry of Legal Affairs. According to the 2016 Estimates, the $16.5M was spent.
Minister Williams, in reply, said it was not until after the budget had been presented that the ‘fraud’ was uncovered. “At the time that this budget was prepared,” he said, “the vehicle still had not been delivered; but they had actually received half of the purchase price already, which I had to retrieve, of course.”
But, try as he might, there was no convincing Nandlall and Edghill, as they still proceeded to badger him with a long list of questions.
In the end, Minister Williams said, “All I can say, Sir, is that the Public Accounts and Auditor-General will deal with this issue.”
With the $16.5M returned to the Finance Ministry, the $6.5M budgeted this year will be used to purchase another vehicle for the Attorney-General and Legal Affairs Minister.
Earlier on in the debate, also, Nandlall had queried about the more than $40M allocated for the provision of roof and land.
Minister Williams, in response, explained that the sum will be used to execute repairs to the Ministry’s roof, but most importantly, it will also be used to purchase two small plots of land in order to extend the building of the Ministry to increase capacity. Each plot will be acquired at $20M.
In the end, $1.508B was budgeted for current expenditure, while $146.313M was set aside for capital expenditure – a total of $1.654B.