Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has raised con­cerns over the “sus­pi­cious” ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lim­it­ed, con­firm­ing that a for­mal probe will now be launched in­to its op­er­a­tions and pur­chase.

Am­plia was ac­quired by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) in 2017 as part of TSTT’s strat­e­gy to ex­pand its broad­band and fi­bre net­work ca­pa­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the res­i­den­tial and en­ter­prise in­ter­net mar­ket.

The min­is­ter said yes­ter­day that a de­ter­mi­na­tion on Am­plia’s fu­ture di­rec­tion would be made af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­clud­ed.

Padarath made the com­ments when ques­tioned by re­porters dur­ing Pow­er­Gen’s An­nu­al Spe­cial Chil­dren’s Sports Day in Syne Vil­lage, Pe­nal, about the de­par­ture of for­mer Am­plia gen­er­al man­ag­er Shawn Clarke.

He said he was ad­vised that Clarke’s ex­it was “an am­i­ca­ble de­par­ture be­tween both par­ties”.

Brid­get Rat­tan has been ap­point­ed act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er.

Claim­ing that Am­plia was ac­quired un­der “very sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances” by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, Padarath re­called that he had raised ques­tions about the ac­qui­si­tion while in Op­po­si­tion.

“Since then, to now, hav­ing come in­to of­fice, it’s a con­ver­sa­tion that I have been hav­ing with TSTT be­cause Am­plia con­tin­ues to bleed us fi­nan­cial­ly, and there is a lot of du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts be­tween Am­plia and TSTT.”

He said he had been ad­vised that the val­ue of Am­plia at the time was one-tenth or less of the price that TSTT paid to ac­quire it.

“What I would like to know at this time is why a com­pa­ny with one-tenth the mar­ket val­ue—why was TSTT al­lowed to pur­chase that com­pa­ny for over $200 mil­lion? On top of that, un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, Am­plia was al­lowed to ac­cess a loan from TSTT of $300 mil­lion. They bought the com­pa­ny at such an in­flat­ed price and then gave a loan from TSTT. So, the Min­is­ter at that time will have to an­swer. There will have to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter, and that is why the nec­es­sary steps are now be­ing tak­en to bring some sort of san­i­ty to what is hap­pen­ing at Am­plia in terms of their ex­pen­di­ture, their man­age­ment and their op­er­a­tions.

“How can a com­pa­ny val­ued at such a small amount be ac­quired at such a large fig­ure with­out Cab­i­net or min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval? There­fore, it tells me that there is more in the mor­tar than the pes­tle and, there­fore, we will be launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how Am­plia was ac­quired, the cir­cum­stances, the fi­nanc­ing, and who made that de­ci­sion to ac­quire Am­plia—a com­pa­ny that con­tin­ues to bleed and du­pli­cate the ef­forts of the main com­pa­ny, which is TSTT.”

Up­on re­ceipt of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials of TSTT, the min­is­ter said he would make a fur­ther state­ment in Par­lia­ment on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween TSTT and Am­plia in the com­ing weeks.

He added that he has asked the board to pro­vide him with a strate­gic plan on how they in­tend to ad­dress the chal­lenges they are fac­ing.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte said Am­plia was ac­quired pri­or to his tenure, but, based on his knowl­edge and rec­ol­lec­tion, it was a de­lib­er­ate strate­gic ac­qui­si­tion, not an im­pro­vised or ques­tion­able trans­ac­tion.

He re­called that at the time, TSTT was fac­ing de­clin­ing rev­enues and an ur­gent need to mod­ernise. The ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia, he said, was in­tend­ed to give the group ac­cess to ad­vanced broad­band tech­nol­o­gy and to repo­si­tion the com­pa­ny for the dig­i­tal tran­si­tion that was al­ready un­der­way.

Not­ing that un­der the chair­man­ship of Robert Mey­er and the lead­er­ship of Ronald Wilcott and Lisa Agard, TSTT un­der­went a com­pre­hen­sive re­struc­tur­ing, he said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was re­fo­cused, mod­ernised, and suc­cess­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed a pro­gramme that al­lowed it to raise sig­nif­i­cant fi­nanc­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al bond mar­ket to sup­port that trans­for­ma­tion.

“Against that back­ground, it is in­ac­cu­rate to char­ac­terise the ac­qui­si­tion as ‘sus­pi­cious’ with­out a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the strate­gic and fi­nan­cial con­text in which those de­ci­sions were tak­en.”

While the min­is­ter is en­ti­tled to con­duct any re­view, he cau­tioned against “draw­ing pre­ma­ture con­clu­sions or cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary pub­lic doubt around de­ci­sions that were part of a struc­tured ef­fort to sta­bilise and mod­ernise a crit­i­cal na­tion­al as­set.”

He added that any as­sess­ment of Am­plia must be ground­ed in facts, con­text, and a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of the strate­gic ob­jec­tives that in­formed the ac­qui­si­tion.

Mean­while, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so dis­missed the min­is­ter’s claims.

“That is the Gov­ern­ment pur­su­ing old ax­es and grous­es by Clyde El­der as a union leader of du­bi­ous cred­i­bil­i­ty. It’s a dis­trac­tion from the cur­rent mis­man­age­ment and nepo­tism with­in TSTT un­der the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Ex­pect noth­ing to emerge from this cha­rade that he is call­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” said Gon­za­les.