NHT sends suspect employees on leave

Friday, January 08, 2010

THE National Housing Trust says it has sent on leave four employees implicated in a contracts corruption probe being conducted by the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) and will co-operate fully with the investigation until the matter is resolved.

A news release from the trust yesterday reported its chairman, Howard Mitchell, as saying that the NHT, as an institution committed to the philosophy of ethical business practices, would leave no stone unturned to get to the root of the matter.

"In this regard, the trust has been co-operating with the OCG since the matter was brought to its attention, and will continue to do so until it is ultimately resolved," Mitchell said, adding that where required, the trust will also fully co-operate with the police, to whom the matter has been referred by the OCG.

Contractor General Greg Christie Wednesday revealed that he had reported to the police a death threat made to a senior director of the OCG who has been leading a probe into "a criminal conspiracy" involving the award of Government contracts by the NHT.

Christie, who said that the threat came from an anonymous telephone caller on Tuesday, revealed that the probe involved four employees of the NHT, as well as five contractors, four of whom, he said, are bogus.

"The five contractors have, during the past four years, been awarded contracts from the NHT totalling at least $87 million in value," Christie said in a news release.

He said his team uncovered that one of the four bogus contractors is a full-time social studies schoolteacher at a prominent St Andrew high school, while another is an information technology specialist.

The contractor general said, too, that one NHT employee has been listed as a full-time employee on the application documentation of the fifth contractor for the past four years, while two other NHT workers are listed as full-time employees of two of the sham contractors.

Yesterday, Mitchell said that the NHT was carrying out its own internal investigations and, to facilitate this being done in the most transparent manner, the organisation had decided to send on leave the employees implicated so far in the OCG investigations.

He said the NHT remained committed to its corporate values of integrity, accountability and professionalism to ensure the utmost probity in its business affairs. He also assured NHT contributors that while short-term measures were being implemented to deal with the matter being investigated by the OCG, longer-term interventions will definitely be put in place if required.