Feb. 19, 2008 — After refusing to pay a third kickback on a $300,000 contract approved by former commissioners Dean Plaskett and Marc Biggs, PubSafe Engineering Consultants was pulled out of the running for other V.I. government contracts, company President David Tucker testified in District Court Tuesday.
Plaskett and Biggs are being tried on St. Thomas on charges of conspiracy, bribery and obstruction of justice in what prosecutors say was a scheme that defrauded the government of $1.4 million.
Later in the day Biggs' attorney, Treston Moore, offered another possible explanation for PubSafe's failure to secure subsequent contracts after cross-examining a former Property and Procurement official. He pointed out that PubSafe, when bidding on another contract mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, did not initially provide all the required documentation needed to support the bid proposal, and stirred up concerns for members of a joint-evaluation committee.
Moore said that Biggs, then commissioner of Property and Procurement, responded to those concerns by canceling PubSafe's proposal. After that, Moore said, Biggs moved forward on a recommendation from Plaskett when awarding the contract to C&R Environmental Design. The contract called for the development of state plans for the regulation of the territory's medical-waste incinerators and the creation of municipal landfills.
While on the stand, Tucker testified that he first became involved with bidding on projects in the territory after receiving a phone call from former DPNR official Hollis Griffin, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his role in the scheme. Tucker said he and Griffin met each other while living in Atlanta, Ga., in the early 1990s, and were introduced by Brent Blyden, another co-defendant in the case.
Tucker said Griffin made it clear that he would be able to secure local contracts for PubSafe in return for kickbacks — money, Griffin said, that would be disbursed between himself, Plaskett and Biggs. PubSafe subsequently bid on, and was awarded, a Title V Air Permit contract geared toward monitoring the level of pollution emitted by several of the territory's biggest industrial companies, Tucker said.
Tucker testified that he spoke with Plaskett, Biggs and a member the joint-evaluation committee set up to review the proposal via teleconference, and was told by Plaskett that he had won the bid. Because the work need to get done as soon as possible, PubSafe started on the job before an official contract had been executed, Tucker said.
Griffin directed that the value of the contract be set at $300,000, Tucker said, adding that the job could have been done for a "fair price" of about $180,000. In return, Griffin would receive a series of three kickbacks, each valued at $58,333 on three sets of $100,000 payments made to PubSafe by the V.I. government. To get the money to Griffin, Tucker said, he subcontracted the job to Global Business Solutions and channeled the funds through the company's owner, Esmond J. Modeste.
Modeste, who has also pleaded guilty on a one-count conspiracy charge, testified last week that he was also given a cut of the PubSafe pie.
Drawing the Line
On Tuesday, Tucker said he "worked hard" on getting the Title V work completed, laboring "day and night" on the contract while holding down a full-time day job at another engineering firm. After making two kickback payments to Griffin, Tucker said he "didn't find it fair" that he was only getting to keep a small portion of the proceeds, and told Modeste that he would not make the final kickback payment.
Before finishing work on the Title V contract, Tucker put in another bid on the medical-waste incinerator and municipal landfill project.
"Mr. Griffin said the contract would be given to me if I provided kickbacks," Tucker said. "I told him I would give him 10 percent, even though he initially said he wanted about half of the money."
Though Griffin said a majority of the funds would be handed over to Biggs and Plaskett, Tucker said Tuesday that he had never seen Griffin give the two commissioners any of the money.
In August 2001, Tucker received a letter saying he was being considered for the medical waste/landfill contract. After participating in a telephone interview with a joint-selection committee formed to review his proposal, Tucker received another letter from Biggs saying his proposal had been canceled pursuant to various sections of the V.I. Code.
"I called Mr. Biggs, and spoke to him after getting the letter," Tucker said. "The conversation was truncated, not satisfying — I didn't hear what I wanted to hear. When someone says canceled, it's clear what that means, but he didn't explain how and why it was canceled in relation to the statute that was mentioned in the letter."
At the time, Biggs did not mention that the evaluation committee had deemed PubSafe's proposal "unresponsive" because of a lack of documentation, Tucker said, adding that he was unwilling to travel to the territory to meet with the committee because the 9/11 terrorist attacks had occurred on the mainland a few days earlier.
Tucker recalled receiving a call from committee member Lloyd Bough asking that additional documentation be submitted, including a cost proposal for the project.
On cross-examination from the defense, Tucker said that because of an agreement made with the government, he could not be prosecuted for any truthful testimony he provided during the trial.
"Disapproved by Biggs"
Stepping up to the stand after Tucker was Olga Meyers, former Property and Procurement deputy commissioner. When PubSafe's proposal came up for review, she said, the joint-evaluation committee — consisting of representatives from both Property and Procurement and DPNR — recommended that the company be given the medical waste/landfill contract. The recommendation, however, was "disapproved by Biggs," she said.
Meyers explained that after looking over a subsequent letter sent to Biggs by committee chairman Austin Medina, she noticed that ratings submitted by Property and Procurement representatives on the proposal were "very low."
She added that Tucker should have included all required information in his original submission, and noted that committee members were not — as they usually are — able to come to a consensus on whether to give the project to PubSafe. Because of these reasons, Meyers said, she agreed with Biggs' decision to cancel the company's proposal.
While Property and Procurement never reissued a request for proposals for vendors interested in taking on the project, the work still had to get done, defense attorneys argued. Using documents provided by the prosecution, Plaskett's attorney Gordon Rhea pointed out that his client had, in the interim, received an unsolicited bid from C&R Environmental Design to develop the state plans.
A letter was subsequently sent from Plaskett to Biggs recommending that the company be given the contract.
While on the stand, Meyers explained that C&R's proposal "was not typical" of most bid packages submitted to the department, as it contained only an introductory letter and a resume. Most packages, she said, range from 30 to 100 pages, depending on the project's scope of work.
A letter from Biggs to former Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, sent in early 2002, stated that Property and Procurement had selected C&R to take on the medical waste/landfill project. A copy of the contract was also included.
Though Biggs had signed off on the document, the contract did make its way through the department's legal counsel and the Division of Procurement for review and approval before heading to the commissioner's desk for a final signature, Meyers said.
Meyers was not present when Tucker made his presentation before the evaluation committee, she said, had "no kno
wledge" about why Biggs' actually disapproved PubSafe's proposal and did not know how C&R's unsolicited bid eventually made its way to DPNR.
The trial, now in its second week, will pick up again Wednesday at 9 a.m.
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