The Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor has halt­ed the award of $3.4 bil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­tracts to 11 com­pa­nies, just hours af­ter a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­fend­ed the process.

The reg­u­la­tor’s chair­man, Bev­er­ly Khan, is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day re­veal­ing that the de­ci­sion was ac­tu­al­ly tak­en on Tues­day—a day af­ter the mat­ter was first raised by for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is—pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings.

Khan said the in­quiry is aimed at en­sur­ing full com­pli­ance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, and de­clined fur­ther com­ment.