Gail Alexan­der

Probe it, Prime Min­is­ter!With that de­mand yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Gov­ern­ment to halt the sale of as­sets of Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL and First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd – pro­posed in the 2017 bud­get – fol­low­ing con­cerns about al­leged con­flict of in­ter­est in the is­sue.

"This ap­pears to be a fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion de­signed by a few to ben­e­fit a few at the ex­pense of hon­est, law-abid­ing tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens... I chal­lenge the PM to di­rect­ly treat with this mat­ter, pub­licly and trans­par­ent­ly and not al­low it to go the way of the Mal­colm Jones write-off," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in her bud­get re­ply.

"The case threat­ens to be big­ger, in­volv­ing bil­lions of State as­sets and what ap­pears to be a net­work of wheel­ing and deal­ing that goes on in the board­rooms of high rolling friends and fi­nanciers and seems to reach right in­to the Cab­i­net...I ex­pect this mat­ter will be de­vel­oped fur­ther in le­gal ac­tion which I am re­search­ing."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar built her case, nam­ing TTNGL share­hold­ers, and at­tempt­ing to link some with Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny chair­man Ger­ry Brooks in his for­mer busi­ness world in­car­na­tion pri­or to his Gov­ern­ment post.

She al­so raised ques­tions on the is­sue about Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, Gov­ern­ment's Eco­nom­ic Ad­vi­so­ry Board chair­man.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter she con­clud­ed, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert came over to the me­dia sec­tion and de­nied her claims, say­ing they were a fig­ment of her imag­i­na­tion and a "straw man." (See oth­er sto­ry)

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the bud­get was a "colos­sal fail­ure, an ex­er­cise in su­per­fi­cial­i­ty, vague­ness and even de­lib­er­ate ob­tuse­ness... rid­dled with mis­cal­cu­la­tions and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions... clear­ly de­signed to bam­boo­zle a pop­u­la­tion still wait­ing to hear the min­is­ter present any tan­gi­ble mea­sure that will ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress T&T's se­cu­ri­ty, safe­ty so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges."

In the cen­tre­piece of her state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar tar­get­ed Im­bert's bud­get an­nounce­ment of the planned sale of TTNGL and FirstC­i­t­i­zens Hold­ings (FCHL) shares, tak­ing is­sue with the tim­ing and man­ner of sale. She said Im­bert had said he'd put "spe­cial arrange­ments in place for ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers" to ac­cess the ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that in­volved a "rights" is­sue – when a com­pa­ny of­fers ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers a right to buy ad­di­tion­al new com­pa­ny shares in the com­pa­ny – and the usu­al ap­proach was to of­fer share­hold­ers a spe­cif­ic num­ber of shares at a spe­cif­ic price.

She asked: "Is he (im­bert) of­fer­ing a dis­count in the price of the shares in re­la­tion to the val­ue at which they are cur­rent­ly be­ing trad­ed? Of­fer­ing the shares at low­er val­ue to these share­hold­ers? If so, why?

"Rights is­sues tend to be in­voked when mar­kets are ris­ing. This doesn't de­scribe present mar­ket con­di­tions. To the con­trary, mar­ket con­di­tions have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly and in par­tic­u­lar the ex­cess liq­uid­i­ty in the sys­tem that ex­ist­ed at the time of the ear­li­er IPOs has long since evap­o­rat­ed. So why is Gov­ern­ment propos­ing to pur­sue this ini­tia­tive in this way now?"

She said TTNGL's 2015 an­nu­al re­port stat­ed the com­pa­ny's main share­hold­ers were the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed, TATIL Life As­sur­ance A/C CC, TATIL Life As­sur­ance Lim­it­ed, De­posit In­sur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion, Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, Michael and He­len Moses and An­tho­ny N Sab­ga. She not­ed four of the five TTNGL di­rec­tors held nom­i­nal amounts of shares as well.

"They are Mr Ger­ry Brooks, An­drew Jupiter, Anand Rag­bir and Ash­meer Mo­hamed... very in­ter­est­ing rev­e­la­tions emerge when you search the di­rec­tors of those com­pa­nies list­ed as share­hold­ers and cross ref­er­ence them," she said.

"Here's just one ex­am­ple. Soon af­ter last year's elec­tion, Mr Brooks re­tired as the Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer (COO) of the largest con­glom­er­ate in T&T. At time of re­tire­ment, he was a mem­ber of the board of the par­ent com­pa­ny of the said con­glom­er­ate. He's al­so pre­vi­ous­ly served as a TATIL di­rec­tor, i.e, one of the com­pa­nies list­ed as a TTNGL share­hold­er.

"In fact, TTNGL's 2015 an­nu­al re­port re­veals that five of the ten share­hold­ers of TTNGL are com­pa­nies or in­di­vid­u­als that are part of the con­glom­er­ate that Mr Brooks was CEO of. Those en­ti­ties as per the 2015 an­nu­al re­port hold 5.64 per cent of the shares of the TTNGL. The NGC at all ma­te­r­i­al times was and is the sin­gle largest share­hold­er of TTNGL."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "So now, in­stead of con­trol­ling 5.6 per cent of this lu­cra­tive cor­po­rate as­set, as a di­rect re­sult of his ap­point­ment by this Gov­ern­ment to the State-owned com­pa­nies NGC and TTNGL), Mr Brooks and his as­so­ciates now con­trol 57.64 per cent of TTNGL... ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, please in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter.

"The plan is to di­vest the 51 per cent share­hold­ing of TTNGL and place it in the hands of ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers and I have al­ready told you that five of the ten main share­hold­ers and Mr Brooks him­self are as­so­ci­at­ed with the same con­glom­er­ate. What does it tell you about the supra-elit­ists? And (Gov­ern­ment is) suf­fer­ing the av­er­age cit­i­zen with tax­es!"

Ed­i­tor's note

The state­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that five of the top ten share­hold­ers of TTNGL are as­so­ci­at­ed with the ANSA McAL group is plain­ly in­cor­rect.

Sev­en of the top ten share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny are not as­so­ci­at­ed with ANSA McAL. They are: Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd, Re­pub­lic Bank, De­posit In­sur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion and Michael and He­len Moses.

The three TTNGL share­hold­ers that are as­so­ci­at­ed with ANSA McAL are Tatil Life A/CC, Tatil Life and An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, the group's chair­man emer­i­tus.

The in­for­ma­tion on the top ten TTNGL share­hold­ers is dis­closed in the com­pa­ny's 2015 an­nu­al re­port, which is a pub­lic doc­u­ment.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is al­so in­cor­rect that Mr Brooks re­tired as the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor head at ANSA McAL af­ter last year's gen­er­al elec­tion. Ac­cord­ing to a T&T Stock Ex­change fil­ing on April 2, 2015, Mr Brooks re­tired from the group ef­fec­tive April 30, 2015, more than four months be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.