While the own­er of Citadel Group Louis Lee Sing re­mains silent on the on-go­ing ac­qui­si­tion of the group's ra­dio sta­tions by One Caribbean Me­dia (OCM), Cris Seecha­ran, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) said the trans­ac­tion is ex­pect­ed to be con­clud­ed in the next four weeks. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lee Sing said he pre­ferred that his pri­vate af­fairs re­main pri­vate. "I rather not di­vulge any de­tails. It's one thing if its re­gard­ing pub­lic af­fairs, but this is pri­vate and I would like it to re­main as such." Asked how come he still oc­cu­pies of­fices at Citadel, Lee Sing said: "I am still in charge be­cause the process has not been con­clud­ed as yet." These things take time, he not­ed. Seecha­ran con­firmed that the process is a lengthy one.

He said all the re­quired doc­u­ments have been sub­mit­ted by both par­ties and they are cur­rent­ly in the hands of the TATT board. How­ev­er, Seecha­ran said there are still some con­di­tions that have not been ful­ly met and TATT is work­ing with the rel­e­vant par­ties to make sure these con­di­tions are ful­ly sat­is­fied. Seecha­ran said he was un­able to di­vulge those con­di­tions. He said once the con­di­tions are met, the board would grant full ap­proval. He es­ti­mat­ed that it should be wrapped up with­in the next four weeks. Seecha­ran ex­plained that the en­tire process is sim­i­lar to a com­pa­ny or in­di­vid­ual ap­ply­ing for a li­cence for the first time. For ex­am­ple, he said both par­ties are re­quired to write to the au­thor­i­ties, where­by TATT would con­duct a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This due dili­gence process in­cludes sub­mis­sion of the com­pa­ny's in­for­ma­tion such as VAT, reg­is­tra­tion and an­oth­er rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, he stat­ed.

A back­ground check is al­so con­duct­ed on all di­rec­tors where a po­lice cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter is re­quired, Seecha­ran fur­ther ex­plained. He said the due dili­gence process is a rig­or­ous one, re­quir­ing a mar­ket­ing plan and full tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial pro­pos­als are sub­mit­ted. He al­so said that the process com­pris­es two main parts among oth­er process­es, which are the li­cence ap­proval process that is very tech­ni­cal and the con­ces­sion doc­u­ments which dic­tate what oblig­a­tions the com­pa­ny is man­dat­ed to ful­fill. In March 2012, OCM an­nounced that they had en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire Citadel Group-op­er­a­tors of I95.5FM, Red 96.7FM and Hitz 107.1FM. OCM is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (CCN) that owns Ex­press and TV 6. It is a pub­lic com­pa­ny and is trad­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change.