An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire has in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the State for the un­law­ful re­vo­ca­tion of his ap­point­ment in June this year.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Hi­laire dis­patched a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the Cab­i­net sec­re­tary and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the break­down of out-of-court set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions.

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in­cludes a de­mand for dam­ages to­talling $9.86 mil­lion, cit­ing breach of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, emo­tion­al dis­tress and loss of earn­ings for the un­ex­pired term of his ap­point­ment.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Hi­laire con­firmed that his le­gal team com­pris­es Stu­art Young, SC, and at­tor­neys Im­ran Ali and An­tho­ny Bul­lock.

His at­tor­neys have been in­struct­ed to pur­sue, with ur­gency, a claim for ju­di­cial re­view of the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net to the Pres­i­dent to re­voke Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment as Gov­er­nor on June 24.

“Since that time, dis­cus­sions ini­ti­at­ed by the State to­wards an out-of-court set­tle­ment have been in­con­clu­sive,” Hi­laire said.

He added that as a re­sult of the lack of res­o­lu­tion, le­gal pro­ceed­ings will now be brought be­fore the High Court, seek­ing what he de­scribed as “ma­te­r­i­al de­c­la­ra­tions and or­ders against the State, in­clud­ing dam­ages.”

The let­ter out­lines for the first time that Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment as Gov­er­nor was re­voked pur­suant to sec­tion 12 (e) of the Cen­tral Bank Act (that is that he was guilty of mis­con­duct in re­la­tion to his du­ties) and sec­tion 12 (g) of the Act (that he failed to car­ry out of the du­ties and func­tions con­ferred or im­posed on him un­der the Cen­tral Bank Act).

Hi­laire served as Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T from De­cem­ber 2015 to June 2025. He re­placed Jwala Ram­bar­ran, whose ap­point­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. Hi­laire was due to serve un­til De­cem­ber 2026.

His tenure was marked by ef­forts to sta­bilise the fi­nan­cial sys­tem dur­ing pe­ri­ods of eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the col­lapse of en­er­gy rev­enues in the mid-2010s.

The Ju­ly 2 pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, a copy of which was shared with Guardian Me­dia, out­lines the ba­sis of his le­gal claims. How­ev­er, up to press time, there was no of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The let­ter lays out a time­line of events be­gin­ning on June 24, when Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, al­leged­ly vis­it­ed Hi­laire at his of­fice at the Cen­tral Bank to press for his res­ig­na­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, Swarats­ingh told Dr Hi­laire that the Prime Min­is­ter was dis­sat­is­fied with his re­fusal to al­low the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to au­dit the Cen­tral Bank’s ac­counts, call­ing it “the last straw.”

Dr Hi­laire re­spond­ed by stat­ing that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al had ceased to be the Bank’s ex­ter­nal au­di­tor in 2024 at her own re­quest, but that he had met with her and in­di­cat­ed that her of­fice could re­view any spe­cif­ic dis­crep­an­cies re­lat­ed to T&T’s fis­cal ac­counts.

The doc­u­ment from the for­mer gov­er­nor’s lawyers said the Min­is­ter al­so raised con­cerns about the ap­point­ment of BDO Trinidad and To­ba­go as the Cen­tral Bank’s ex­ter­nal au­di­tor, sug­gest­ing that the firm had links to a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter’s rel­a­tive.

Dr Hi­laire said he clar­i­fied that BDO was se­lect­ed af­ter a com­pet­i­tive and in­de­pen­dent pro­cure­ment process, ful­ly aligned with Cen­tral Bank pol­i­cy, and that there was no on­go­ing con­nec­tion be­tween BDO and An­gus Young, who end­ed his em­ploy­ment with the firm in 2014.

The let­ter al­leged that Swarats­ingh made it clear the new ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tend­ed to in­stall “their own per­sons” in key in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Cen­tral Bank.

He al­leged­ly in­formed Dr Hi­laire that a re­place­ment had al­ready been se­lect­ed and would be ap­point­ed lat­er that same day, re­gard­less of whether or not Dr Hi­laire re­signed.

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that when Hi­laire asked for time to seek le­gal ad­vice, the Min­is­ter is said to have in­sist­ed he make a de­ci­sion im­me­di­ate­ly, stat­ing that fail­ure to re­sign would re­sult in the re­vo­ca­tion of his ap­point­ment.

Lat­er that af­ter­noon, the min­is­ter al­leged­ly re­turned to Dr Hi­laire’s of­fice with a let­ter signed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, stat­ing that up­on his res­ig­na­tion, he would re­ceive a full pay­out “as soon as pos­si­ble.”

The Min­is­ter al­leged­ly asked that the Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment work out the fi­nal cal­cu­la­tions ur­gent­ly.

When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, Min­is­ter Swarats­ingh said he could not re­spond as it is now a High Court mat­ter and he re­quest­ed that all ques­tions be di­rect­ed to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Up to press time, the AG did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions.