Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day that Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, is re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try.

At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, the Prime Min­is­ter was asked when can the coun­try ex­pect the re­port on the for­eign ex­change car­tel.

De­scrib­ing try­ing to get in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Bank as be­ing "like a bed of thorns or pulling teeth," she re­ferred to a case in court that the Gov­ern­ment may have to bring to per­suade the coun­try's fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor.

"The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor re­fus­es to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion," she said, adding that Hi­laire had failed to pro­vide the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al with in­for­ma­tion in 2024 and again this year. She said that sit­u­a­tion was wor­ry­ing her.

Get­ting back to the top­ic of the forex car­tel, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the "block­er" the Gov­ern­ment is get­ting from the Cen­tral Bank is its fail­ure to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion. She said the Cen­tral Bank is "us­ing cer­tain pro­vi­sions of the law, say­ing they don't have a du­ty and that they are not un­der any oblig­a­tion to dis­close in­for­ma­tion."

At sec­tion 56, the Cen­tral Bank Act states: "Ex­cept in so far as may be nec­es­sary for the due per­for­mance of its ob­jects, and sub­ject to sec­tion 8 of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, every di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer and em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall pre­serve and aid in pre­serv­ing se­cre­cy with re­gard to all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the af­fairs of the Bank, any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion or per­son reg­is­tered un­der the In­sur­ance Act or of any cus­tomers there­of that may come to his knowl­edge in the course of his du­ties."

At the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 15, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that three of her min­is­ters—Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism, Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj had been man­dat­ed to pro­duce a re­port on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age over the past ten years.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said one of the cries the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has heard is on the is­sue of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty. As a re­sult, said Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Gov­ern­ment needs to know where the for­eign ex­change went, who re­ceived the for­eign ex­change, why they re­ceived it, the process used to de­ter­mine who re­ceived for­eign ex­change, and how that for­eign ex­change was used or de­ployed.

“Then this re­port, as I say, will be made pub­lic to iden­ti­fy the main users, the main fa­cil­i­ta­tors of this un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion, and ex­plain to the pub­lic how this en­tire for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel and con­spir­a­cy be­tween cer­tain op­er­a­tives and busi­ness­es was func­tion­ing," the Prime Min­is­ter said three weeks ago.