Hugh E. Darley 'shocked' @ ports project spending
During a Statement by Ministers speech during the Sixth Sitting of the First Session of the Third House of Assembly, the Minister listed the related expenses for both the landside and marine phases of the project.
He said the total cost of the marine side of the project came up to $36.8 million while the landside development and all its related spending came up to a total of $37 million. He said with the addition of soft and administrative costs the total for the entire project came up to $82.9 million.
However, the Minister said little to put to rest the allegations of corruption and overspending levelled some weeks earlier by Darley, or to justify the upswing in the final project cost.
'Shocked'
Writing in an email seen by this news site, Darley said, “I know that you are as shocked as I am at the current level of spending on the Pier Project. I have to apologise for underestimating the budget amount I thought had been spent of only $70,000,000.”
According to Darley, he had no way of knowing the internal administrative cost of $9,000,000.
“As we have stated before we (IDEA) could have built the entire project for between $40-45 million. Our project would also have been high quality construction, not the current cheap renditions of Historic Structures that we had designed,” he said in the email.
Darley levelled the allegation that the government deliberately ballooned the cost to almost match the total from the projected 90,000,000 from passenger head tax as per the agreements with Norwegian Cruise Line and Disney Cruise Lines.
“As I told you last year the Government would find a way to spend the whole of the guaranteed head tax estimated to be $90,000,000 from Disney and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Surely an inquiry will be forthcoming and the people will get to see where the monies have gone.”
'Sorry'
Mr Darley reiterated that he was retaining a VI Law Firm “to answer the Premier’s recent comments and follow his agreement to hear my complaint on monies owed our firm.”
The American is claiming that Government owes him some $2M for his drawings for the ports project. He has since produced evidence of this after Premier Dr The Hon D. Orlando Smith recently claimed that Mr Darley was paid all his monies.
According to Darley in his email of January 26, 2016, he would hate to add to the losses but insisted that he must be paid for efforts.
“I am so sorry for you and the people of the BVI and their loss of ‘value for money’ on this project that I helped create,” concluded Darley’s email.
Premier and Minister of Finance Dr The Honourable D. Orlando Smith had announced last week Thursday January 21, 2016 that he has ordered an audit of the project, drawing widespread condemnation regarding the perceived non-transparency of such a move where Government will be auditing itself.
During 2015, Governor John S. Duncan OBE said that he did not see the need for a Commission of Inquiry into the ports project despite the recommendations of both the Auditor General's Office and the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Assembly.
.png)
.png)
.png)
Follow Us On
24 Responses to “Hugh E. Darley 'shocked' @ ports project spending”
These people (Darley and his kind) are masters of deceit. Remember these people have stolen and hidden our ancient heritage. So now he is "shocked" at the cost. He now calls the buildings "cheap". He feels "sorry" for the BVI people. Powerful psychotic stuff from a member of a psychotic people.