Word: petrotrin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...started working as a consultant and soon realized that Citibank Trinidad had begun marketing the structured finance instruments that he had developed to such state-owned entities as Trintomar, a joint venture of Petrotrin and NGC, Trinidad's oil and natural-gas authorities. It bothered Seereeram that Citibank was taking complex financial vehicles intended for private companies, in part to reduce their taxes, and selling them to a struggling public entity that at the time paid minimal taxes. He began to investigate, hoping to take a fee from any money recovered. "They were not disclosing the true nature...
...Resources in Trinidad) started pumping millions of cubic feet of gas through the platform every day. The deal eventually faded from view, until a new chairman arrived at Trinidad's state-owned oil company. Donald Baldeosingh was only 34 when he took the post and was determined to make Petrotrin efficient and profitable. He wondered how the Trintomar venture could have got into such a poor lending deal and asked a London law firm to look into it. The firm retained David Hudson, a retired British merchant banker, who responded with a scathing report, a copy of which TIME obtained...
...features of the structure, and have seen no evidence of any," Hudson wrote. "I conclude, based on the evidence I have seen, that it is probable that the transaction, taken as a whole, was both fraudulent and corrupt." Hudson's report found a responsive audience in Baldeosingh, who stopped Petrotrin from doing business with Citibank and pushed the government to investigate. "We had an opportunity to recover a significant amount of money," Baldeosingh says. Instead, Trinidad's elected officials turned on Baldeosingh. After tussling with the Energy Minister over control of a Petrotrin unit, Baldeosingh left office...
...enough. Even now, Trintomar officials dismiss the idea that the deal took advantage of them. "I thought it was a well-taken decision," says Malcolm Jones, who signed the Citibank-Trintomar agreement on behalf of the state-owned gas firm. Jones says he relied on the finance staff of Petrotrin to evaluate the complicated deal. Petrotrin's president, Rodney Jagai, also defends the deal, arguing that the terms reflect Citibank's dominant position in the market at the time. "Citibank was the only game in town," he says, dismissing the offers made by other banks. "Were you really overcharged...
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