Watts' company secured $17.4M in state contracts before switching to UNC

Be­fore Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts crossed the po­lit­i­cal floor -- oust­ing Fos­ter Cum­mings as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro -- a com­pa­ny he owns re­ceived at least $17.4 mil­lion in state con­tracts, a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion has found.

Be­fore join­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Watts served for 14 years as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, un­der both Max­ie Cuffie and lat­er Cum­mings.

Watts is list­ed as a di­rec­tor of Sphinx Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, which re­ceived at least four state con­tracts be­tween 2020 and 2024 -- while he still held his PNM con­stituen­cy po­si­tion.

The com­pa­ny, in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2012, re­port­ed six em­ploy­ees and a reg­is­tered debt of $3 mil­lion in its 2024 an­nu­al re­turns.

Ac­cord­ing to Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) doc­u­ments, a $10 mil­lion con­tract vari­a­tion was paid to Sphinx for the re­moval of 12 town­house units (Build­ings 175-178) at the Eden Gar­dens Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Pack­age Four. The build­ings were de­mol­ished af­ter they were ex­ten­sive­ly van­dalised and dam­aged.

A con­tract vari­a­tion is a mu­tu­al agree­ment to change the terms of an ex­ist­ing con­tract af­ter it has been signed. The doc­u­ments did not re­veal the orig­i­nal con­tract val­ue.

Sphinx al­so re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $68,800 for in­stalling sew­er and wa­ter lines at town­house build­ings 190-192 at Eden Gar­dens.

The com­pa­ny was paid an­oth­er $2 mil­lion in two sep­a­rate trans­ac­tions be­tween Oc­to­ber 2022 and Au­gust 2023, though the doc­u­ments did not spec­i­fy the ser­vices pro­vid­ed or the project lo­ca­tion.

Watts did not re­spond to mul­ti­ple ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

Asked whether prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed or whether a con­flict of in­ter­est may have ex­ist­ed, for­mer HDC chair­man Noel Gar­cia -- who served from 2020 to 2025 -- said he was "out of the coun­try" and there­fore un­able to com­ment.

The Eden Gar­dens project has a con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry. In 2011, then HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and now Min­is­ter Jer­lean John -- Watts' Cab­i­net col­league -- was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion over al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the project. No charges were laid.

In 2016, John and sev­er­al for­mer di­rec­tors were named in a state-filed law­suit al­leg­ing fraud in the Eden Gar­dens mat­ter. The High Court struck out the case in 2018, and it was lat­er re­filed. John has con­sis­tent­ly de­nied wrong­do­ing.

UDe­COTT pay­ments

Ac­cord­ing to the 2022 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's Re­port, Sphinx Con­struc­tion re­ceived $5.29 mil­lion from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (UDe­COTT) for the con­struc­tion of the Bon Air Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Sphinx was hired af­ter the orig­i­nal con­trac­tor, Zion Con­struc­tion, aban­doned the project fol­low­ing threats from neigh­bour­hood gangs.

UDe­COTT of­fi­cials told Guardian Me­dia that six mur­ders oc­curred in con­nec­tion with the project dur­ing its con­struc­tion phase, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­lays and es­ca­lat­ing costs.

The project ul­ti­mate­ly cost $19 mil­lion to com­plete -- al­most dou­ble the ini­tial $10.4 mil­lion es­ti­mate -- with po­lice of­fi­cers hired to guard the site for five months.

Watts, once con­sid­ered the right-hand man of PNM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, even­tu­al­ly fell out with him for rea­sons nei­ther par­ty has pub­licly stat­ed.

In re­sponse to Watts' de­fec­tion to the UNC, Cum­mings said:

"The peo­ple of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro have a view of this type of be­hav­iour. The mar­gin of vic­to­ry for the PNM in 2025 will be even greater than it was in 2020, fol­low­ing their [UNC's] mas­sive dis­tri­b­u­tion of free house­hold ap­pli­ances. We will save Trinidad and To­ba­go from the reck­less UNC."

Their feud es­ca­lat­ed in June when Min­is­ter Watts ac­cused Cum­mings of "reck­less mis­man­age­ment, squan­der­ma­nia and mis­use of pub­lic funds" at the now-de­funct Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice.

Watts al­leged that Cum­mings hired 61 in­di­vid­u­als -- whom he de­scribed as PNM as­so­ciates -- on short-term con­tracts with­out fol­low­ing prop­er pro­ce­dures in the lead-up to the elec­tion. The file was re­ferred to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Cum­mings fired back, deny­ing the al­le­ga­tions and ac­cus­ing Watts of po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring.

"You have the min­is­ter talk­ing about an au­dit, and fine -- you can do an au­dit, it's pub­lic funds," Cum­mings said. "But don't hide be­hind ex­cus­es. Your re­al in­ten­tion is to shut down these pro­grammes.

A lot of these new min­is­ters don't un­der­stand the process. Clear­ly, this min­is­ter doesn't un­der­stand the pro­ce­dures for re­cruit­ment and em­ploy­ment in the pub­lic ser­vice. A min­is­ter can­not hire any­one -- and I cer­tain­ly couldn't hire any­body. Maybe that's what they're do­ing now."

Records show that AR Hold­ings, owned by for­mer Cum­mings as­so­ciate Austin Rogers, re­ceived $961,000 in pay­ments at Eden Gar­dens in 2020.

Rogers has de­nied any busi­ness ties to Cum­mings. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia found that while the com­pa­nies do not share di­rec­tors, Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed (owned by Cum­mings) and AR Hold­ings are reg­is­tered to the same ad­dress: Unit 2, Metro Build­ing, Noel Street, Cou­va -- the same reg­is­tered ad­dress as Kyl­don-Metro Ho­tel, owned by busi­ness­man Mukesh Ram­s­ingh.

At a PNM press con­fer­ence in Sep­tem­ber, Cum­mings ac­knowl­edged know­ing Rogers but de­nied any wrong­do­ing.