An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The three re­main­ing di­rec­tors of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd re­signed yes­ter­day.

Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, Ger­ard Coop­er, and Tri­cia Coos­al re­signed on Tues­day and yes­ter­day, Dr Ster­ling Frost, Fran­ka Costel­loe and chair­man Ter­rence Bharath re­signed, com­pa­ny sources told Guardian Me­dia.

The com­pa­ny is list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change, and the ma­te­r­i­al change of the di­rec­tors's res­ig­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to be of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced short­ly.

Their res­ig­na­tions came af­ter it was re­port­ed in the me­dia that the board said it would con­tin­ue to serve in the best in­ter­est of the share­hold­ers of the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny.

Last week, dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on state board di­rec­tors to re­sign.

“I want to tell all boards who are re­fus­ing to re­sign and the CEOs and man­age­ment of state en­ter­pris­es who are busy sign­ing off con­tracts and hir­ing friends and fam­i­ly, I tell them every con­tract they’ve en­tered in­to will be sent straight to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau. So every per­son and every com­pa­ny in­volved will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“This is the most shame­less type of be­hav­iour I’ve ever seen ex­hib­it­ed dur­ing a change of gov­ern­ment. It is overt, it is bold-faced and try­ing to eat-ah-food down to the wire and af­ter you’ve passed the fin­ish line—it doesn’t work like that,” said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, adding that the Gov­ern­ment has plans to deal with board mem­bers who are re­fus­ing to step down.

Bharath An­gous­tra’s for­mer chair­man told Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day that the board had no in­ten­tion of fight­ing any­one for po­si­tions on the An­gos­tu­ra board.

Bharath said the board at the time in­tend­ed to be civ­il, co­op­er­a­tive and act in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny's 2,400 share­hold­ers.

Cor­po­ra­tion Sole owns 29.97 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd, on be­half of the State.

An­gos­tu­ra's largest share­hold­er is Rumpro Com­pa­ny, which owns 44.97 per cent of the Laven­tille-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny. Rumpro is owned by CL Fi­nan­cial, a group that is in liq­ui­da­tion.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, An­gos­tu­ra's line min­is­ter, to ask when a new board would be re­in­stat­ed, but no an­swer was forth­com­ing up to press time.

In April, An­gos­tu­ra de­clared a prof­it of $144.26 mil­lion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, which was 5.07 per cent less than the $151.98 mil­lion it re­port­ed in 2023.

In the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, for­mer chair­man Ter­rence Bharath said, "For the third con­sec­u­tive year, we have sur­passed the bil­lion-dol­lar rev­enue mile­stone, achiev­ing to­tal rev­enue of $1.06 bil­lion, a 1 per cent in­crease over the pri­or fis­cal year."