Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The sis­ter-in-law of a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter has been axed from the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC) three months af­ter the com­pa­ny of­fered to re­new her con­tract. The move, Sun­day Guardian learnt, is not sit­ting well with chair­man George Stan­ley Beard who has re­port­ed­ly locked horns with board mem­bers over an at­tempt by him to over­ride a board de­ci­sion not to re­new the con­tract of the com­pa­ny's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Lara de Son­pere. De Son­pere is mar­ried to Shas­tri Roberts, the broth­er of Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts. At the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy is the lump sum ex gra­tia pay­ment of three months salary that Beard rec­om­mend­ed to be paid to de Son­pere.

In Ju­ly, the com­pa­ny's hu­man re­sources man­ag­er Anthea Davis wrote to de Son­pere who was hired un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2009, in­di­cat­ing that the com­pa­ny was in­ter­est­ed in re­new­ing her con­tract as cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and head of le­gal, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 27. How­ev­er, last week the board took a de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate de Son­pere's con­tract based on a le­gal opin­ion from at­tor­ney Derek Ali. In his rec­om­men­da­tions to the board on Oc­to­ber 30, Ali stat­ed that the hu­man re­sources man­ag­er had no au­thor­i­ty to re­new de Son­pere's con­tract since the mat­ter re­quired board ap­proval. Act­ing on his ad­vice, the board opt­ed to adopt the rec­om­men­da­tion and not re­new de Son­pere's con­tract. The de­ci­sion by the board mem­bers re­port­ed­ly led to the fall­out be­tween Beard and board mem­bers.

Show­ing his dis­ap­proval, Beard in an e-mail in­struct­ed the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) San­dra Perkins to dis­re­gard the board de­ci­sion and do oth­er­wise. A copy of the e-mail ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian was al­so for­ward­ed to Tourism Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie. The e-mail was al­so sent to board mem­bers. Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment over the move, Beard stat­ed in the e-mail that he was not in sup­port of the de­ci­sion.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of board mem­bers were in sup­port of the de­ci­sion, Beard stat­ed: "Mrs de Son­pere re­ports to the chair­man and the chair­man on­ly. The is­suance of your let­ter to Mrs de Son­pere was not ap­proved by me al­though oth­er mem­bers of the board agreed to is­sue the same. I have on every oc­ca­sion at board lev­el at­tempt­ed to have this is­sue re­solved with­out po­ten­tial con­flict and or pos­si­ble lit­i­ga­tion." Not­ing that de­spite the views and de­ci­sions ad­vanced by the at­tor­ney and the re­view team agreed up­on at com­pa­ny's last board meet­ing, Beard is­sued the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the CEO:

• You re­call with im­me­di­ate ef­fect your let­ter of No­vem­ber 1, in­stant, to Mrs de Son­pere

• That Mrs de Son­pere be paid for the month of Oc­to­ber

• That she be paid a sum equiv­a­lent of three months salary as an ex gra­tia pay­ment which has been the com­mon prac­tice of the board in past is­sues sur­round­ing ter­mi­na­tion or sep­a­ra­tion of an em­ploy­ee, and in light of the fact that she in­ti­mat­ed that she was will­ing to con­tin­ue in the em­ploy of the com­pa­ny when asked by the hu­man re­source man­ag­er.

Re­it­er­at­ing his dis­ap­proval over the de­ci­sion, Beard gave rea­sons for his po­si­tion:

• Since as­sum­ing the of­fice of chair­man, I have not found rea­son to ques­tion her loy­al­ty and or com­mit­ment to her ser­vice to the chair­man and the com­pa­ny.

• Last­ly, I am yet to un­der­stand or ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the rea­son(s) for the non-re­new­al of Mrs de Son­pere's con­tract.

Chair­man warned against mak­ing pay­ments

The e-mail, Sun­day Guardian was told, sparked con­tention and on No­vem­ber 3, chair­man of the Ten­ders Com­mit­tee at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram, who is al­so a di­rec­tor, re­spond­ed to Beard on be­half of board mem­bers who con­demned his ac­tions. In a copy of the e-mail the mem­bers frowned up­on Beard for his in­ten­tions to "por­tray fel­low di­rec­tors and (sad­ly) the CEO in a neg­a­tive light" to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. Rati­ram, in the e-mail, stat­ed that at the last board meet­ing held on Oc­to­ber 21, the is­sue sur­round­ing de Son­pere was dis­cussed ex­ten­sive­ly. Ac­cord­ing to Rati­ram, giv­en the na­ture of the mat­ter, the board unan­i­mous­ly agreed to re­tain Ali be­cause of his ex­per­tise in the field of em­ploy­ment law.

"Mr Ali was re­tained, and the CEO prompt­ly pro­vid­ed him with a de­tailed brief on the is­sue. On Oc­to­ber 29, Mr Ali held a de­tailed meet­ing on the is­sue with the CEO, di­rec­tors Lar­ry Nath, Al­imud­din Mo­hammed, Dr Ann Marie Phillip-Ho­sein, and me. The CEO had pre­vi­ous­ly in­formed the board of this meet­ing, and in­di­cat­ed that any di­rec­tor who wished to at­tend was wel­come to do so. "Mr Ali then for­ward­ed a de­tailed le­gal opin­ion to the CEO, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 30. It stat­ed, in­ter alia, that the hu­man re­sources man­ag­er did not have the pow­er to re­new Mrs de Son­pere's con­tract, and Mrs de Son­pere has no ex­ist­ing con­tract with the TDC," Rati­ram stat­ed. Stat­ing that it was on this ba­sis the board adopt­ed Ali's ad­vice, Rati­ram said Beard failed to in­di­cate his dis­en­chant­ment at that point.

"You, our leader, in your trade­mark style, re­mained mute and in­vis­i­ble on this cru­cial is­sue, which has dogged this com­pa­ny for months. You re­fused to in­di­cate any po­si­tion at all. "I found this to be not on­ly dis­re­spect­ful and dis­cour­te­ous to fel­low di­rec­tors, but al­so an ab­di­ca­tion of your solemn du­ty to the com­pa­ny. Now, amaz­ing­ly, on Wednes­day night, you have sud­den­ly awok­en from your deep slum­ber to cas­ti­gate the CEO and the rest of the board," he fur­ther stat­ed. Ques­tion­ing why Beard re­fused to in­di­cate his ob­jec­tion be­fore, Rati­ram al­so warned the chair­man to im­me­di­ate­ly de­sist in­struct­ing that a three-month ex gra­tia pay­ment be made to de Son­pere. "In re­spect of your in­struc­tion to pay Mrs De Son­pere a sum which shall be in the vicin­i­ty of $120,000, I take strong ob­jec­tion to this. First­ly, she would have re­ceived a hand­some pen­sion that was due to her when her con­tract ex­pired. Sec­ond­ly, ex gra­tia pay­ments are pay­ments which are not manda­to­ry, but rather, vol­un­tary.

"The mon­ey which you in­struct­ed the CEO to pay be­longs not to you or me, but to the peo­ple of this na­tion. There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such wastage of the peo­ple's mon­ey, and cou­pled with that, you can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly or­der such a pay­ment. "Rest as­sured, my fel­low di­rec­tors and I shall du­ti­ful­ly guard the pub­lic purse. When­ev­er we are called up­on to ac­count, we shall not have cause to hang our heads in shame. I re­mind you that the board, not any in­di­vid­ual di­rec­tor, is the high­est au­thor­i­ty of the com­pa­ny. No di­rec­tor can over­ride a board de­ci­sion or man­date." De Son­pere, ac­cord­ing to med­ical doc­u­ments, has been on sick leave since the end of May, af­ter re­ceiv­ing an in­jury while on com­pa­ny busi­ness. Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Beard proved fu­tile and voice mes­sages to his cel­lu­lar phone al­so went unan­swered.

De Son­pere: I did noth­ing wrong

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, de Son­pere said she was con­fused over the turn of events. "I did ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong. I re­ceived a let­ter on No­vem­ber 2, stat­ing that the TDC was not re­new­ing my con­tract. How­ev­er, it was quite per­plex­ing bear­ing in mind that in Ju­ly, the TDC wrote to me in­di­cat­ing that my con­tract would be re­newed." Not want­i­ng to get in­to any 'war', de Son­pere said all she would like is to be paid what is owed to her. "I did not re­ceive any pay­ments. As a mat­ter of fact, TDC owes me based on my let­ter, my Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber salary. In ad­di­tion, they al­so owe me $20,000 to cov­er my med­ical bills giv­en that I was giv­en an un­der­tak­ing that all my med­ical bills would be paid and they have not paid any.

At present, I spend al­most $4,000 on med­ical bills. I have all my bills to show. I in­tend to have a dis­cus­sion about my in­volve­ment at the TDC-whether or not I go back de­pends on the out­come. At the end of the day it is about com­mon cour­tesy." De Son­pere said while she had no proof, the way the sit­u­a­tion tran­spired she be­lieves it is pol­i­tics at play.

TDC board

Chair­man George Stan­ley Beard

Di­rec­tor Kevin Rati­ram

Di­rec­tor Bri­an Ali

Di­rec­tor Al­imud­din Mo­hammed

Di­rec­tor Ju­dith Mark

Di­rec­tor Lar­ry Nath

Di­rec­tor Reisha Ram­nar­ine Lewis

Di­rec­tor Michelle Palmer Kezi­er

Di­rec­tor Kevin Ken­ny

Di­rec­tor Giselle La Ronde-West

Di­rec­tor Dr Ann Marie

Phillip-Ho­sein