An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) has ex­pand­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to for­mer act­ing CEO Keino Cox to in­clude al­le­ga­tions of pos­si­ble fraud or dis­hon­est con­duct, de­lib­er­ate con­ceal­ment of ma­te­r­i­al in­for­ma­tion, undis­closed con­flicts of in­ter­est and the mis­use or ex­cess of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty in re­la­tion to Hum­ming­bird Hold­ings.

The amend­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion fo­cus­es on Hum­ming­bird’s pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of Lib­er­ty’s 49 per cent share­hold­ing in TSTT, and whether Cox used his po­si­tion or ac­cess to con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion to ad­vance Hum­ming­bird’s in­ter­ests with­out prop­er au­thor­i­ty or dis­clo­sure.

In a let­ter is­sued yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Saman­tha Singh-Poona, act­ing on be­half of TSTT, pro­vid­ed Cox with an amend­ed state­ment of in­ves­ti­ga­tion cov­er­ing ad­di­tion­al mat­ters. The com­pa­ny em­pha­sised that no find­ings had been made against him and he will be giv­en a full op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Cox said he could not com­ment on a doc­u­ment he had not yet re­viewed and re­ferred in­quiries to his le­gal team, led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and at­tor­ney Kristy Mo­han.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, in­ves­ti­ga­tors will ex­am­ine whether Cox’s deal­ings with Hum­ming­bird in­volved “the de­lib­er­ate con­ceal­ment or with­hold­ing of ma­te­r­i­al in­for­ma­tion,” con­duct ca­pa­ble of amount­ing to fraud or dis­hon­esty, breach­es of fidu­cia­ry du­ties and du­ties of fi­deli­ty, undis­closed con­flicts of in­ter­est, and the ex­er­cise of au­thor­i­ty with­out the nec­es­sary man­date.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors will al­so con­sid­er whether Cox used his of­fice or ac­cess to con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion “to ad­vance the in­ter­ests of Hum­ming­bird or oth­er per­sons with­out prop­er au­thor­i­ty or dis­clo­sure.”

A key as­pect of the in­quiry, ac­cord­ing to the amend­ed state­ment of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, is Cox’s role in iden­ti­fy­ing, in­tro­duc­ing, fa­cil­i­tat­ing or ad­vanc­ing Hum­ming­bird as a po­ten­tial pur­chas­er of Lib­er­ty’s stake. In­ves­ti­ga­tors will seek to de­ter­mine when he first be­came aware of the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­est and if dis­cus­sions start­ed be­fore a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment was re­viewed and ex­e­cut­ed.

They will al­so ex­am­ine whether Hum­ming­bird’s prospec­tive in­volve­ment was dis­closed to TSTT’s chair­man and board, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) and the rel­e­vant share­hold­er. NEL owns the state's 51 per cent share­hold­ing in its in­vest­ment port­fo­lio.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is fur­ther prob­ing whether Cox had any di­rect or in­di­rect fi­nan­cial, com­mer­cial or oth­er in­ter­est in Hum­ming­bird or the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion, or whether any as­so­ciate of his stood to ben­e­fit from the trans­ac­tion.

TSTT is al­so scru­ti­n­is­ing Hum­ming­bird’s ex­ist­ing com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship with it. By the time Hum­ming­bird was be­ing con­sid­ered as a po­ten­tial pur­chas­er, it had al­ready been award­ed the Am­plia con­tact cen­tre arrange­ment, and steps were un­der­way to tran­si­tion that busi­ness to the com­pa­ny, the state­ment claims.

In ad­di­tion, Hum­ming­bird was in­volved in a pro­posed mi­croloan ini­tia­tive that would have en­ti­tled it to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of trans­ac­tion rev­enue un­der a rev­enue-shar­ing arrange­ment, de­spite TSTT not yet hav­ing ob­tained a money­len­der’s li­cence.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors will con­sid­er whether those deal­ings cre­at­ed ac­tu­al or po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est, whether the re­la­tion­ship should have been dis­closed and whether Cox ought to have re­cused him­self from all mat­ters in­volv­ing Hum­ming­bird.

The probe will al­so as­sess whether the Am­plia arrange­ment, the pro­posed mi­croloan ini­tia­tive, the rev­enue-shar­ing agree­ment and the pro­posed share ac­qui­si­tion formed part of a con­tin­u­ing re­la­tion­ship that should have been dis­closed and sub­ject­ed to in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny.

Cox’s au­thor­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing Lib­er­ty’s share­hold­ing is al­so un­der re­view. In­ves­ti­ga­tors will de­ter­mine whether he had ac­tu­al or del­e­gat­ed au­thor­i­ty from TSTT, NEL or the rel­e­vant share­hold­er to iden­ti­fy, en­gage, fa­cil­i­tate or ad­vance Hum­ming­bird as a prospec­tive buy­er. Due dili­gence con­duct­ed on Hum­ming­bird is al­so un­der scruti­ny.

The roles of TSTT em­ploy­ees Terese Lu­cio Bar­row and Khaleeb Mo­hammed are al­so be­ing ex­am­ined.

Ex­ter­nal at­tor­ney Anees Ra­haman is like­wise un­der scruti­ny. TSTT is seek­ing to de­ter­mine if Cox re­tained or in­struct­ed Ra­haman, on whose be­half he act­ed, the au­thor­i­ty un­der which he be­came in­volved, and whether TSTT in­curred or was ex­pect­ed to in­cur le­gal fees as a re­sult.

Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary mat­ter

The amend­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so rais­es is­sues re­lat­ing to Cox’s treat­ment of the com­pa­ny’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are ex­am­in­ing whether Cox claimed the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary on­board­ed a staff mem­ber with­out the re­quired ap­proval process de­spite Hu­man Re­sources email­ing a staffing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to Cox and his ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant on Ju­ly 30 seek­ing ap­proval.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion will con­sid­er whether Cox was aware of that sub­mis­sion and whether sub­se­quent rep­re­sen­ta­tions re­gard­ing the ab­sence of ap­proval were “know­ing­ly or wil­ful­ly false, in­com­plete or mis­lead­ing.”

The probe fur­ther re­vis­its an Au­gust 3 mem­o­ran­dum sent by Cox to the board con­cern­ing the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary’s di­rec­tor­ship of the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (NPICTT).

The let­ter al­so refers to al­le­ga­tions of “de­lib­er­ate ob­struc­tion or neg­li­gence of du­ty” and “neg­li­gence of du­ty and/or dis­hon­esty re­flect­ed in gov­er­nance fail­ure.” In­ves­ti­ga­tors will as­sess whether those al­le­ga­tions were sup­port­ed by in­for­ma­tion avail­able to Cox and whether sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence from his at­tor­neys con­tained ma­te­r­i­al mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions that en­tered the pub­lic do­main and ex­posed the Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary to rep­u­ta­tion­al harm.

Cox’s con­tract as act­ing CEO end­ed on Ju­ly 31 af­ter the TSTT board re­viewed his per­for­mance. He was re­placed by Reza Ho­sein and lat­er placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.

He is cur­rent­ly chal­leng­ing both the non-re­new­al of his con­tract and his ad­min­is­tra­tive leave through a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 8.