Ken Julien, energy czar and the man leading the Manning administration's tertiary education policy, has emerged as a point man in several little companies with links to E Teck, government's latest development company and the National Energy Corporation (NEC).
Julien, who is chairman of E Teck holds directorships in NEC, Hype Construction Services Ltd, Pan American Development Co Ltd, the National Energy Skills Center (NESC) and Alutech Ltd.And until last year, he was a director of Valeo Software Ltd and Alutrint Ltd.
Hype was incorporated on February 27, 2003 and share the same registered address as the NESC, Esperanza Road, Brechin Castle, Couva. The initial shareholding is held by the NESC but an intent to transfer the shares at a later date to "graduates of the Hype Training Programme", is stated in the Articles of Incorporation at the Companies House.
Valeo, incorporated in June 2003, is a joint venture company between E Tech and InterFix LLC, a US based software development and IT services company that has already benefitted from a $13.5 million facility from the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The business plan is to cash in on the medical transcription industry in the US healthcare market.
The returns, however, are long in coming. Lots of expensive training and not a client in sight, according to sources. Julien has referred all questions relating to the cost of the medical transcription training to E Teck but UTT insiders say the university which has gone to government on several occasions for additional funding (last April, the UTT sought an additional $106.5 million) has
paid a heavy price for the medical transcription training. Documents obtained by the Sunday Express show that the UTT paid $6.5 million to fund the training programme for the period October 2004 to September 2005.Sources pointed to another company, Medical Data Caribbean Ltd (MDCL, which is a fully funded subsidiary of UTT that is managed and operated by E Teck under contract.
Who pays and how public funds are channelled through the slew of little companies are for now a secret. The university's financials are not subject to public oversight. And while UTT's senior manager, Business Development Zameer Mohammed has talked about "audited accounts" being sent to the line minister, the Sunday Express understands that UTT is yet to engage an external auditor.
Sources report that the university had put out a tender, actually informed auditing firm, KPMG, that it had won the tender but did not follow up in engaging the firm. Insiders say the accounts are done internally. They also report the award of a $15 million contract to an advertising agency, Advance Dynamics Ltd, in which Julien's brother-in-law, Barry Mc Comie, is a principal.
Mohammed, however, insists that "Advance Dynamics Ltd has a contract for video production which it won in competition with several other companies. The official records of UTT will indicate that in recognition of a perceived conflict of interest, Prof Julien did not participate in any aspect of the tendering process".
UTT insiders said that the initial contract to Advance Dynamics was awarded by the National Energy Skills Centre, which managed the university in its early days. Sources say the contract was extended by the UTT.
But there are other questionable payments and contracts, among them, a decision to purchase computer and IT equipment from a small company called Diamond Systems and Supplies Ltd.
The Sunday Express was told that UTT paid an inflated bill of some $8.6 million for equipment which could have been sourced at substantively cheaper prices directly from the manufacturers. The UTT paid Diamond some $14,000 for a single Dell desktop computer which Dell was selling for $6,000, according to sources.
Mohammed denied this, countering: "Far from the statement made in your letter, the Board of Governors took a decision to purchase all of its computers and IT equipment directly from the manufacturers avoiding the inflated prices of the local agents". Sources say, however, this was after the Diamond affair.
