Shadow Transport Minister Lawrence Scott has raised concerns about the company involved in the redevelopment of the airport.

An agreement between Government and the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) was signed by Finance Minister Bob Richards last Monday.

A new terminal building valued at an estimated $200 million will be built and groundbreaking is expected as early as next year.

The public-private partnership will require no initial expenditure by Bermuda, Mr Richards said when announcing the project, and title to the airport and adjacent lands will remain with Government.

But Mr Scott, the Progressive Labour Party MP, voiced concerns in the House of Assembly on Friday about CCC’s links to SNC-Lavalin, a company tainted by claims of corruption.

CCC — a Crown corporation of the Government of Canada that acts as Canada’s international contracting and procurement agency — recommended to the government of Trinidad and Tobago that SNC-Lavalin build a $1 billion hospital.

But the country’s Government pulled out of the arrangement in September last year, with housing minister Dr Roodal Moonilal stating at the time the deal could damage the nation’s international reputation.

“In light of the latest reports of corruption, bid-rigging and poor ethical conduct, we requested due diligence”, Mr Moonilal told The Trinidad Guardian at the time.

Mr Scott highlighted that in April last year, the World Bank banned SNC-Lavalin Inc — and more than 100 affiliates — from bidding on projects funded by the bank for 10 years.

At the time, the bank said the debarment followed the company’s misconduct in relation to a bridge project in Bangladesh, “as well as misconduct under another bank-financed project”.

CCC also helped with Cuban deals worth an estimated $370 million for a firm headed by Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian, who was jailed for 15 years for corruption in Havana in September.

A spokeswoman for the Tokmakjian Group told Reuters that month that “no wrongdoings were identified in relation to the CCC contracts” involving the company in Cuba.

But Mr Scott told the House the links were a cause for concern, as was the “signing of a secretive contract to give away our most valued asset”.

“No Bermudian company got a chance to put in a bid,” he said. “I wish this Government would have done due diligence.” He told the House the PLP “have a better way” to redevelop the airport that did not involve our “most valuable asset being given to another government to handle”.

“The airport should be a Bermudian project, it’s a Bermudian landmark, one of our most lucrative and important assets. Government shouldn’t be giving that away.”

Mr Scott said the PLP “agree we can’t afford to do this” development without outside funding but said there were alternatives to this deal.

He highlighted a suggestion outlined in the PLP’s response to the Throne Speech, calling for the Department of Airport Operations to be turned into a quango for the purpose of creating an Airport Authority, which would take it off the Government books and could seek independent financing for development.

Mr Scott told The Royal Gazette yesterday that the CCC deal meant they would decide who would carry out the work, predicting a Canadian company rather than a Bermudian construction firm.

“There’s no open tendering, just ‘this is who you’re going to get’. That’s what’s troubling,” he said. “How does the Dunkley administration justify signing this? The deal was done behind closed doors. Why wasn’t the biggest deal in recent history not in the Throne Speech?”

Mr Scott said the PLP had been criticised for taking too much time and spending too much money on consultants for projects.

“I’d prefer quality over quantity,” he said.

Finance Minister Bob Richards told the House on Friday that Government did not have the money to pay for infrastructure projects of the airport’s scale, saying Bermuda was “up to our gills in debt”, and insisted the project would lead to jobs for Bermudians.

“We want a solution that will have minimal impact on the Bermuda Government’s balance sheet,” he said. “We’ve done quite a bit of research on this, there’s no other way to do it than this.

“The One Bermuda Alliance figured out a way to do this and they didn’t. We can create a few hundred jobs and have an asset of which all Bermudians will be proud.

“We need to get Bermudians back to work now — we can get shovels in the ground and people working quicker this way.

“The company he [Mr Scott] was talking about was not CCC, it was the contractor. It’s not CCC that’s the corrupt company, it was the contractor. The huge majority of the work that will be carried out on this project will be carried out by local Bermudian companies using local labour.” Mr Richards said the employment of Bermudians had been a “stipulation of this Government from the start”.

“The only problem the Opposition has with it [the deal] is that they couldn’t do it,” he said. “Financing had to come first, if we can finance it we can do it. We found a way to finance it.”

The Ministry of Finance and CCC were approached for further comment but neither had responded by press time last night.

On its website, CCC states it is subject to Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, which stipulates that bribing other countries’ government employees is a criminal activity.

The company also states that all contracts with Canadian suppliers include a clause specifically forbidding such acts and should a Canadian supplier be found bribing a government official while under a CCC contract, the company reserves the right to impose various sanctions.