Two weeks af­ter the cur­rent Cab­i­net was con­sti­tut­ed, on May 15, 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar held a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Red House at which she man­dat­ed three of her min­is­ters to pro­duce a re­port on dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age of for­eign ex­change over the pre­vi­ous ten years. In those com­ments, she ac­cused lo­cal banks of op­er­at­ing a for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel.

In out­lin­ing what she ex­pect­ed in that re­port, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said: “So one is the dis­tri­b­u­tion, but there is al­so the leak­age, and this is a se­ri­ous mat­ter. Again, one of the cries we heard in the coun­try was about the is­sue of forex, so we need to know where the forex went, to whom it went, why it went, how it went, and how it was de­ployed, how it was used.

“Those re­ports will come to us, and we will share them with you. 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 forex dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel and con­spir­a­cy be­tween cer­tain op­er­a­tives and busi­ness­es was func­tion­ing.”

Nei­ther T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter nor the three min­is­ters she man­dat­ed to pro­duce the for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age re­port—Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo; Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh or Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj—have con­firmed that such a re­port is be­ing worked on or has been com­plet­ed.

How­ev­er, at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on June 5, 2025, a Guardian Me­dia re­porter asked the Prime Min­is­ter when the coun­try could ex­pect the re­port on the so-called for­eign ex­change car­tel. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused then Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, of re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try.

De­scrib­ing try­ing to get in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Bank as be­ing “like a bed of thorns or pulling teeth,” she said the Gov­ern­ment may have had to ini­ti­ate lit­i­ga­tion to per­suade the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor to re­lease the in­for­ma­tion.

“The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor re­fus­es to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion,” she said.

Nine­teen days af­ter the T&T Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments, on June 24, 2025, Dr Alvin Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment as Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor was of­fi­cial­ly re­voked—fol­low­ing a vis­it to his of­fice by a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter who tried to get Dr Hi­laire to re­sign. In Au­gust 2025, that same min­is­ter al­so tried to con­vince Karen Dar­basie to re­sign as CEO of mjaor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens group.

On Au­gust 11, 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched one of the most vi­tu­per­a­tive at­tacks on the three lo­cal banks that the Gov­ern­ment con­trols, sav­ing spe­cial ven­om for Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL), which is this coun­try’s largest com­mer­cial bank.

This ex­cerpt is be­ing re­pro­duced in this space again, be­cause the an­nu­al meet­ing of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the par­ent com­pa­ny of RBL, is nor­mal­ly held in the mid­dle of De­cem­ber, which is in five to six weeks’ time.

Fol­low­ing is a ver­ba­tim re­pro­duc­tion of what the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said about the three banks:

“The rest of the coun­try must not set­tle for scraps while the fake elite up in the north en­joy the fat of our land.

“Tonight, I’m warn­ing the boards and man­age­ments of Re­pub­lic Bank, First Cit­i­zens Bank and Ex­im­Bank, to sort them­selves out. These in­sti­tu­tions are not func­tion­ing in the best in­ter­ests of our cit­i­zens. They op­er­ate in the in­ter­est of a few.

“Imag­ine this: this re­al­ly hap­pened; it is a true sto­ry. Imag­ine a one-per­center walks in­to the of­fice of Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John. He comes in with a fold­er with pa­per and puts the pa­per on the desk, and you know what is in that pa­per? Puts that pa­per on her desk and he tells her he wants land at In­vaders Bay. He said he’s get­ting a loan from Re­pub­lic Bank to buy the land. Of course at re­duced, dis­count­ed prices.

“And guess what? He is then get­ting a loan from the same Re­pub­lic Bank to build a build­ing, and then the same Re­pub­lic Bank will rent the build­ing from him to al­low him to re­pay the loan and make a prof­it. This is a re­al sto­ry. That is what has been hap­pen­ing in se­cret, be­hind closed doors un­der the for­mer regime. Thank God you put us in­to of­fice so that we can ex­pose them for their deal­ings. This sto­ry I tell you, I am told that the same thing is hap­pen­ing at First Cit­i­zens Bank.

“There is no trans­paren­cy, no fair­ness, just in-house deal mak­ing...

RFHL’s board

My re­search has re­vealed that RFHL cur­rent­ly has 12 di­rec­tors: sev­en ap­point­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion; four in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors and one ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

The Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed di­rec­tors are: Yash­mid Kara­math (chair­man); Dr Tim­o­thy Af­fon­so; Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er; Nali­ni Bansee; Rhion Karim; Dr Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed and Dr San­dra Sookram.

The four in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors are Ian L Ben­jamin, Michael Noel, Col­in Soo Ping Chow and Robert Wick­ham.

The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor is Nigel Bap­tiste (pres­i­dent and CEO).

So, with sev­en of the 12 di­rec­tors on the RFHL board, there is ab­solute­ly no doubt that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion con­trols RFHL. This is a sig­nif­i­cant de­par­ture for RFHL.

In its 2024 an­nu­al re­port, RFHL dis­closed that it had 12 di­rec­tors. Five of those di­rec­tors were nom­i­nat­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, six were in­de­pen­dent, in­clud­ing the for­mer chair­man Vin­cent Pereira and one was an ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor (Mr Bap­tiste). Of the five nom­i­nat­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, two were nom­i­nat­ed by the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF) and three by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T.

A for­mer di­rec­tor of RFHL told me yes­ter­day that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion “took the po­si­tion that they want­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the board but not con­trol or a ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rec­tors.”

In my view, if the po­si­tion ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the for­mer di­rec­tor is ac­cu­rate, that is bet­ter cor­po­rate gov­er­nance than the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er ap­point­ing sev­en of 12 di­rec­tors. It is im­por­tant to re­call that the NIF holds about 29.92 per cent RFHL and the NIB holds about 21.50 per cent of RFHL.

And there is al­so the need for RFHL to in­clude, on its board, rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the re­gion­al coun­tries in which it op­er­ates.

Tan­coo’s po­si­tion

In de­liv­er­ing the 2026 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the fol­low­ing:

“For­eign ex­change short­ages re­main a chal­lenge for busi­ness­es, lim­it­ing ac­cess to raw ma­te­ri­als and pro­duc­tion. The un­fair prac­tices at ma­jor com­mer­cial banks and the Ex­im­Bank have ex­ac­er­bat­ed these short­ages. This ad­min­is­tra­tion will act de­ci­sive­ly to sta­bilise the ex­ter­nal po­si­tion...

“We will en­sure that pro­duc­tive sec­tors have ac­cess to for­eign ex­change. We have in­stalled new boards at First Cit­i­zens Bank and The Ex­im­Bank, and we will move to in­stall a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL).

“I am proud to an­nounce that in our ef­fort to build eco­nom­ic fair­ness, To­ba­go’s in­ter­ests will be rep­re­sent­ed on all three boards, with a To­bag­on­ian on each board.”

Ques­tions

1) By stat­ing that the “un­fair prac­tices at ma­jor com­mer­cial banks” are ex­ac­er­bat­ing for­eign ex­change short­ages, isn’t Mr Tan­coo di­rect­ly tar­get­ing Re­pub­lic Bank, the largest bank in T&T?

2) The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment “will en­sure that pro­duc­tive sec­tors have ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.” Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, he said the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing “to in­stall a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.”

By link­ing the in­stal­la­tion of a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, which is the whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), to the Gov­ern­ment en­sur­ing that “pro­duc­tive sec­tors have ac­cess to for­eign ex­change,” isn’t Mr Tan­coo sug­gest­ing that when the Gov­ern­ment ap­points a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors on the RBL board that the pro­duc­tive sec­tors will have ac­cess to for­eign ex­change?

3) More than a year af­ter Mr Tan­coo made the state­ments out­lined above, how suc­cess­ful has the Gov­ern­ment been in en­sur­ing that “pro­duc­tive sec­tors” have ac­cess to for­eign ex­change?

4) What does he mean by “pro­duc­tive sec­tors?” Is he re­fer­ring to a com­pa­ny like PriceS­mart (see our sto­ry on page 5) and oth­er su­per­mar­ket-type op­er­a­tions? Or is he re­fer­ring to a com­pa­ny like Had­co, which says over 35 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tured frozen treats go to ex­port mar­kets through­out the Caribbean?