By Denyse Renne, www.guardian.co.tt

UNC Senator Sadiq Baksh has been charged with corruptly receiving an estimated $2 million from Northern Construction Ltd, principal contractor on the Piarco Airport Development Project.

It is alleged the money went into the coffers of the UNC.

Baksh, a former Works and Transport Minister under the UNC administration during whose term the Piarco terminal was built at an estimated $1.6 billion, is expected to surrender today after arrest warrants were issued for him yesterday.

Although eight other people, including Brian Kuei Tung who served as Finance Minister in the previous UNC and PNM governments, appeared in court yesterday, Baksh spent most of his afternoon in the Senate.

“I have not been summoned,” he told reporters during a tea break in the Upper House.

The UNC, now in Opposition, featured in several charges yesterday as the beneficiary of sums allegedly received by Baksh and Kuei Tung from Northern Construction Ltd.

NCL chairman Ish Galbaransingh was also slapped with a slate of new charges stemming from the project.

Baksh’s charge stated that between July 8, 1999, and October 10, 1999, he corruptly obtained from NCL for the UNC, the sum of $2,592,012.59.

Baksh, who was the UNC’s campaign manager in the last two general elections, is also accused of corruptly receiving money from Birk Hillman Consultants, a Miami firm which developed the design for the terminal.

The company has since folded.

However, its principal directors Ron Birk and Eduardo Hillman have also been named among those charged with fraud related to the project.

Port-of-Spain magistrate Ejenny Espinet read out a list of charges yesterday, and called Baksh’s name although he was absent.

Overall, the police filed charges against 17 people who are alleged to have conspired with others between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2001, with intent to defraud the Airports Authority.

Three foreign construction companies, former executive chairman of Nipdec, the late Trevor Romano, and Peter Cateau, client representative for the Ministry of Works and Transport during the project, have also been charged.

These latest charges were laid even as the preliminary inquiry into the first slate of corruption charges related to the project resumes today at the Port-of-Spain Eight Magistrate’s Court before Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls.

Kuei Tung and Pierre, as well as NCL executives Ishwar Galbaransingh and Amrith Maharaj, Maritime executive Steve Ferguson, former Government Minister Russell Huggins, Maritime executive John Smith and Barbara Gomes are accused of conspiring to convert more than $19 million obtained under false pretences from the Airports Authority.

Sadiq plays it cool

By Sherwin Long

Amid reports of a warrant being issued for his arrest, Opposition senator Sadiq Baksh appeared cool yesterday, and dismissed the reports as rumours.

During a tea break in the Senate, Baksh said he was never summoned to appear in court for any involvement in the Piarco airport scandal.

“I have not been summoned,” he said.

“I have been hearing a lot of rumours, too, but I expect that (as) this is a government of deflection and diversion.”

UNC chairman Wade Mark also accused Government of infiltrating the legal system.

He said in the wake of rising murder and kidnapping rates, Government was seeking to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.

“So the police apparently is now in cahoots with the PNM in order to come up with all kind of scurrilous charges,” Mark said.

“The Anti-Corruption Bureau has now become corrupt.

“It has become PNM-contaminated.”

Mark labelled Anti-Corruption Bureau chief Maurice Piggott and Supt Wellington Virgil as “stooges of the PNM.”

Citing last week’s cocaine find in a diplomatic pouch, Mark said Government was now awaiting the opportune moment to serve warrants against UNC affiliates.

He said whenever Prime Minister Patrick Manning was in a corner, he used the police, and this was politics of deflection.

Baksh was in the Senate last night, but from around 6.45, he spent over an hour in the tea room.

Mark said he was thankful for the Privy Council having a say in local legal matters, and he would never support the Caribbean Court of Justice because he feared that it, too, would be contaminated by Government.