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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

CAL Five Absent

Board fails to meet af­ter 'free tick­ets' re­port

by

20130508

The board of Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) did not meet yes­ter­day as sched­uled be­cause vice-chair­man Mo­han Jaikaran and oth­er di­rec­tors were ab­sent.Jaikaran, who is al­so the chair­man of WIN Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd (WINTV), was among five di­rec­tors who were a no-show yes­ter­day.The oth­er ab­sen­tee di­rec­tors were Gizelle Rus­sell, Avedanand Per­sad, Venosh Sage­wan-Maraj and the Ja­maican rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Den­nis Lalor.

T&T Guardian learned chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan was the lone di­rec­tor who turned up at CAL yes­ter­day af­ter the board meet­ing was can­celled.An ex­clu­sive T&T Guardian sto­ry yes­ter­day re­port­ed that Jaikaran had re­quest­ed 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets for a Moth­er's Day con­cert sched­uled for New York City and Toron­to this week­end.

Af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of the ar­ti­cle yes­ter­day, a num­ber of peo­ple tele­phoned the T&T Guardian to com­plain the next avail­able flight to John F Kennedy In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port was on May 26.Sev­er­al ques­tioned whether they were "bumped off" flights to fa­cil­i­tate Jaikaran's re­quest.When the T&T Guardian called to ask about flights to New York, a reser­va­tion clerk con­firmed the next avail­able flight was on May 26.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Moo­nan con­firmed that the board meet­ing did not take place."Two di­rec­tors called in sick and the oth­er three di­rec­tors had oth­er en­gage­ments," Moo­nan said.Asked if he was aware that a di­rec­tive had been giv­en by Jaikaran to is­sue the 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets to him, Moo­nan said: "What I found out is that no di­rec­tive was giv­en. An ap­pli­ca­tion was made for spon­sor­ship for some bands to go to Toron­to and New York and it was ap­proved at a man­age­ment lev­el."

The 19 tick­ets did not have to go to the board for ap­proval, he said."Man­age­ment ap­proves that. It would have been be­tween the mar­ket­ing de­part­ment and the act­ing CEO, Robert Cor­bie."Told that in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by the T&T Guardian re­vealed that Cor­bie had not ap­proved the 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets, Moo­nan replied: "The in­for­ma­tion you have prob­a­bly is dif­fer­ent to the in­for­ma­tion that was made avail­able to me."

Per­form­ers card­ed for the con­cert in­clude Ray­mond & Dil-E-Nadan, Ravi B & Kar­ma, and KI & 3Veni Band.The con­cert is be­ing held on Sat­ur­day at the Dou­ble Tree by Hilton Ho­tel near the Toron­to air­port and on Sun­day (Moth­er's Day) at Ja­maica Av­enue, Rich­mond Hill, New York. Jaikaran is list­ed as a co-pro­mot­er of the event.

Moo­nan dis­missed the sug­ges­tion there might be a con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween Jaikaran's em­ploy­ment as vice-chair­man at CAL and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of WINTV. "I am not aware there is a con­flict of in­ter­est. My in­for­ma­tion is that these par­tic­u­lar shows have been go­ing on for the longest while. He has been re­ceiv­ing spon­sor­ship from both BWIA and CAL."

Asked if it was the norm for BWIA or CAL (which re­placed BWIA in 2007) to give Jaikaran 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets, Moo­nan said: "No, I do not have the ex­act amount but what I am say­ing it is part of the nor­mal spon­sor­ship pro­gramme."Moo­nan said last year CAL al­so spon­sored air­line tick­ets for the Olympic team."Last year we ap­proved tick­ets for the en­tire Olympic team which is part of our nor­mal man­age­ment prac­tices."

Moo­nan said CAL al­so spon­sored air­line tick­ets for two re­porters from ra­dio sta­tion I95.5 to at­tend a func­tion in Lon­don. He did not dis­close their names.He said the air­line had al­so spon­sored tick­ets for the Red Cross So­ci­ety and var­i­ous sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Jaikaran did not re­spond to tele­phone calls or text mes­sages sent by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.


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