Mrs. Toelkes, here are the facts

Dear GPSM president Amellia Toelkes: Under normal circumstances, I would choose not to respond to you, as your comments are ridiculous, but I will proceed forward to clarify a few things.

First and foremost, your gender, or being a woman, has nothing to do with your fraudulent General Pacific Services Marianas request for quotation submittal. I have never once stated that your gender makes you less qualified, or not qualified, so please stick to the facts.

If you claim to own 100 percent of GPSM, then why did you fail to participate in any of the negotiations for the GPSM RFQ? You were never present. It seems the only time you were involved was when you and your husband, Robert Toelkes, were having meetings and offering unsolicited proposals to CUC board members, like the asinine $160-million reverse osmosis scheme that would have been a disaster for our CUC ratepayers.

Mrs. Toelkes, here are the facts. Your signature is on the RFQ and you are the 100 percent owner and president of GPSM, yet you hired a chief negotiator to do your bidding. You were never even present during the discussions and negotiations with CUC management and their legal counsel, but your husband, Robert Toelkes, was present. So who is the owner and president of GPSM? Is it you or Mr. Toelkes?

Your GPSM RFQ for the emergency purchase order of an 8- to 10-megawatt generator was riddled with not just lies but fraud. Your RFQ claims a partnership with Fairbanks Morse as you must at least have a partnership with an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to qualify for the RFQ, but that proved not to be the case. The truth is, your company was simply going to be the salesman, or middleman, for Fairbanks Morse. Furthermore, you were not even involved in the negotiations with Fairbanks Morse. Your husband, Mr. Robert Toelkes, was. In fact, Power Generation Segment manager David McCallum wrote a “letter of correction” that appeared in the Marianas Variety on April 17. Mr. McCallum stated, “Fairbanks Morse was not a ‘partner’ to GPSM nor were they a signatory to the agreement between GPSM and CUC.” Let me add that, according to CUC legal counsel Jim Sirok’s public comments at our House committee meeting on April 11, your chief negotiator, Guam Sen. James Espaldon, claimed on the first day of the negotiations that there was a partnership between your GPSM company and Fairbanks Morse, but on the second day, claimed there was no partnership. If there was no partnership with Fairbanks Morse, then GPSM is not qualified to even be considered for the RFQ. So who is lying here? Are you saying that CUC legal counsel Jim Sirok and CUC deputy director William Gilmore are lying?

With regard to your GPSM RFQ, you committed fraud when you claimed that your less than one-year-old company was responsible for several successful projects on Saipan and throughout Micronesia and that you were in business since 1983. Please note that your 100-percent owned company, GPSM, submitted the RFQ, not your husband, Robert Toelkes. Not his father. Not his bankrupt company in Guam that owes millions of dollars to the Guam government and the IRS. And not your companies based in Guam. If you like, we can go over your RFQ that you submitted and I will gladly show you the pages where fraud was committed. Let me know when you have time and we can sit down together with CUC’s legal counsel, our House counsels, the Attorney General, OPA, and the FBI. I look forward to our meeting and I am sure we all would be happy to ask you a lot of questions since you didn’t show up for the House committee meeting regarding the emergency RFQ for the 8- to 10-megawatt generator. You were absent, just as you were absent during the critical negotiations with CUC management and CUC legal counsel Jim Sirok. I did notice your husband, Robert Toelkes, in the audience during our House meeting, sitting right next to your chief negotiator, Sen. Espaldon. Aside from you, also missing from April 11’s committee meeting was your GPSM agent, Albert Taitano, who just so happens to be a member of the CUC board. Also missing was your vice president of GPSM, Mr. Phillip Roberto, who just so happens to be the stepson of CUC board chair Adelina Roberto, and also the chief of staff of Sen. Espaldon. Mrs. Toelkes, are you aware that these conflicts of interest are not just unethical, but could be considered illegal if collusion was involved? I can assure you, my good colleagues and I will continue to look into your GPSM RFQ submittal. We hope that should you be called to answer questions in the near future that you will be willing to take an oath.

Mrs. Toelkes, CUC chair Adelina Roberto claimed during our April 11 House meeting with CUC that she did not see her stepson Phillip Roberto’s name on the articles of incorporation for GPSM, and that she only saw your name and the name of your treasurer, Ms. Kimberly Smith. The fact is, Phillip Roberto’s name as vice president of your 100-percent owned company was right between your name and Ms. Kimberly Smith’s name. How could she have missed that? If chair Roberto stated on record that his name was never there, then we are to assume that either she is lying, or that you edited it and inserted his name later. So what could it be? It is something that the OAG, OPA, and the FBI must investigate and find how that was possible? It is obvious someone is lying here. Who could it be?

Mrs. Toelkes, as 100 percent owner of GPSM, I want to ask you two questions: Have you ever procured or purchased a power plant engine before? What is your background and experience in power plant engines and generators? I look forward to your answers but also ask that you give us your educational background and degree.

Mrs. Toelkes, what is your relationship to Guam Sen. James Espaldon? Why would he fly down to Saipan to be your chief negotiator? How is it possible that as chief negotiator, Sen. Espaldon never knew that his chief of staff, Phillip Roberto, just so happened to be your vice president? Now surely you all met and discussed things. You are the president and 100 percent owner of GPSM, are you not? So please do explain to me and the rest of the CUC ratepayers why a Guam senator would fly to Saipan on different occasions and agree to be the chief negotiator. Are you paying him? Did you pay for his plane ticket or accommodations? Did he do this all for free? If he did, why would he? Please do explain how you were able to get a Guam senator to do all of this for you for free. I am sure the Guam Legislature’s ethics committee would like you to share this information with them as well.

Mrs. Toelkes, in closing, please stick with the facts at hand and don’t try to sidestep here. There is an investigation underway and as a representative of our people and as a ratepayer of CUC, I will do everything in my power to ensure our people are not deceived and lied to. No company shall get special treatment or special deals under my watch. And as a father of a daughter and three sons, my wife Daisy and I do everything we can to encourage and empower them to be the best they can be in life. Our children’s gender has absolutely nothing to do with their future nor is their gender responsible for their actions and decisions they make in their lives. It is deplorable and shameful that you would even insinuate such a thing.

If you would like to set up a meeting to discuss this further with myself and my colleagues and our legal counsel, Attorney General Edward Manibusan, OPA Auditor Mike Pai, the FBI, and CUC legal counsel Jim Sirok, please let me know and I will be more than happy to set up the meeting. Thank you.

Rep. Ed Propst
Capital Hill, Saipan