An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment last week at­tempt­ed to pres­sure the Group CEO of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group, Karen Dar­basie, to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly, a move that was re­pu­di­at­ed by the board of the bank, which agreed to al­low her to take her ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion leave from Au­gust 21 (Fri­day) and re­tire from First Cit­i­zens on Oc­to­ber 21.

Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to force Dar­basie’s im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion in­clud­ed leak­ing an er­ro­neous sto­ry to the News­day that the Gov­ern­ment had ac­cept­ed her let­ter of res­ig­na­tion and cir­cu­lat­ing a fake What­sApp mes­sage that her re­tire­ment on Oc­to­ber 21 was not due to “ex­ter­nal pres­sure, reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues or fi­nan­cial fac­tors.”

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that last Tues­day (Au­gust 19), Dar­basie wrote to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, and copied Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh.

A source ex­ter­nal to the bank said Dar­basie’s let­ter to the min­is­ters in­di­cat­ed that her re­tire­ment date was in May 2026, but that she was pre­pared to demit of­fice as CEO of T&T’s sec­ond-largest bank be­fore that, if the terms of her con­tract of em­ploy­ment were ho­n­oured.

In re­sponse to Dar­basie’s let­ter, Swarats­ingh wrote her last Wednes­day (Au­gust 20) stat­ing, “Fol­low­ing guid­ance from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (John Je­re­mie SC), on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go-main share­hold­er and Cor­po­ra­tion Sole-I ac­cept your let­ter of res­ig­na­tion from First Cit­i­zens.

“We un­der­take to view favourably the fol­low­ing mat­ters set out in your let­ter (of Au­gust 19):

(a) Salary

(b) Bank ve­hi­cle ben­e­fit

(c) Pen­sion ben­e­fits

“Fur­ther we un­der­take to take ad­vice from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on:

(a) An­nu­al flex­i­ble spend­ing al­lowance

(b) Bonus.”

Sev­er­al sources told Guardian Me­dia that Dar­basie’s let­ter of Au­gust 19 in­clud­ed no ref­er­ence to her re­sign­ing from the bank.

An in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ex­pert, who is aware of some of the is­sues sur­round­ing her de­par­ture, de­scribed as “im­prop­er” a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter at­tempt­ing to pres­sure the res­ig­na­tion of the CEO of a state-con­trolled com­pa­ny that has a board in place.

In an all-staff memo on Fri­day, First Cit­i­zens chair­man An­tho­ny Smart said the board held a spe­cial meet­ing ear­li­er that day, fol­low­ing which he ad­vised em­ploy­ees that Dar­basie had “pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave for the pe­ri­od (from) Au­gust 21, 2025 and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21, 2025.”

Smart al­so told the em­ploy­ees that the com­pa­ny’s suc­ces­sion plan was in place.

“Con­sis­tent with the pub­lished an­nounce­ment made on April 4, 2025, the board has ap­point­ed Ja­son Julien, cur­rent­ly group deputy CEO busi­ness gen­er­a­tion, to act as group CEO in Dar­basie’s ab­sence with ef­fect from Au­gust 22, 2025, un­til the re­tire­ment of the group CEO af­ter which he will as­sume the sub­stan­tive po­si­tion as group CEO.”

In his Au­gust 20 let­ter to Dar­basie, Swarats­ingh al­so told her, “As in­di­cat­ed to you, our po­si­tion re­gard­ing your fi­nal work­ing day has changed. You are now to pro­ceed on paid va­ca­tion leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, rather than on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2025, as dis­cussed.”

Ac­cord­ing to a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is­sued by at­tor­neys for dis­missed Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, Swarats­ingh vis­it­ed Hi­laire’s of­fice on June 24, 2025, in­di­cat­ing that Gov­ern­ment want­ed the gov­er­nor to leave the post and it would be pre­pared to pay Hi­laire in full for the re­main­der of his term, if he were to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly. Lat­er that day, Hi­laire re­ceived a doc­u­ment from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo that his ap­point­ment had been re­voked.

Con­tact­ed by What­sApp for com­ment on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, Swarats­ingh said he was aware of her al­leged res­ig­na­tion be­cause he was copied on it.

Asked if he was in a po­si­tion to share the al­le­ga­tions that were made against Dar­basie, Swarats­ingh said, “I have no idea what you are re­fer­ring to.”

Rea­son for pres­sure to re­sign

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that one of the rea­sons the Gov­ern­ment want­ed Dar­basie to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly was be­cause it claimed the bank had pro­vid­ed for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley with pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

That al­le­ga­tion was first raised by Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Dar­rell Al­la­har, in his Ju­ly 1 con­tri­bu­tion to the Mid-year Bud­get de­bate.

In his con­tri­bu­tion, much of which com­prised com­plaints about First Cit­i­zens, Al­la­har said, “The PNM gov­ern­ment has for the last 10 years left the com­mer­cial banks alone to bru­talise poor peo­ple, while en­abling friends and fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers to ac­cess for­eign ex­change and to nav­i­gate the bank­ing sys­tem and the cream of our eco­nom­ic sys­tem with ease.

“... we are left to feel the pain of the or­di­nary per­son and the in­con­ve­nience that they suf­fer be­cause of this ab­ject stu­pid­i­ty of com­mer­cial bankers and the pref­er­en­tial treat­ment they choose to give to big clients where they put the big boys first.”

He then said some­one had giv­en him an email, but he did not know the ori­gin of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Al­la­har said, “It is an email to some­body called Karen Dar­basie, in which a high pub­lic of­fi­cial is say­ing: ‘Please do a let­ter for PM to pur­chase US dol­lars to pay these three in­voic­es. He needs to have pay­ment made to­mor­row, no lat­er and is wait­ing for a let­ter to con­firm in­struc­tions now.’

“In­voic­es to be paid by him for a friend. And it is an email from that per­son to Karen Dar­basie...But I will get back to that an­oth­er day.”

Dr Row­ley re­sponds

Asked on Sat­ur­day by What­sApp if he was aware that an al­le­ga­tion in­volv­ing him may have been one of the rea­sons the Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to force Dar­basie to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly, Dr Row­ley re­spond­ed:

“I am a share­hold­er and cus­tomer at First Cit­i­zens. I have on­ly en­gaged in NOR­MAL bank­ing pro­ce­dures there and have re­ceived the kind of treat­ment I get at oth­er banks in the coun­try.

“First Cit­i­zens is not the on­ly bank that of­fers ‘pri­vate bank­ing’ or per­son­al ser­vices.

“I did see a breach of bank­ing pri­va­cy a few weeks ago when UNC Sen­a­tor Al­la­har was in Par­lia­ment quot­ing from an in­ter­nal bank email con­cern­ing my busi­ness and telling lies that I was get­ting for­eign ex­change for a friend. It was a lie.

“It had to do with me buy­ing a Guyanese wood house from Guyana and pay­ing for it (US$25,000), pay­ing ship­ping and bro­ker­age and des­ig­nat­ing my builder as the “agent” to re­ceive the con­tain­er.

“Over the years, when I trav­elled main­ly on gov­ern­ment busi­ness, I would re­quest small sums of cash in for­eign cur­ren­cy and would usu­al­ly re­turn un­spent amounts to the coun­try.

“None of my bank­ing busi­ness is ex­tra­or­di­nary and has noth­ing to do with Al­la­har, Swarats­ingh or any­one in the UNC for that mat­ter.

“I hear my name be­ing called in their vendet­ta against the Group CEO at the bank. Once they call my name with­in the law it’s okay with me, but once they slan­der me, I will take ad­vice on that.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked the for­mer prime min­is­ter whether he made oth­er re­quests for for­eign ex­change from First Cit­i­zens or ma­jor­i­ty state-con­trolled Re­pub­lic Bank for his le­gal mat­ter at the Privy Coun­cil or for his for­eign med­ical check­ups.

“I have done noth­ing but my pri­vate needs at my First Cit­i­zens bank, as you have touched on...Al­so, while I have small ac­counts in oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, my main bank is First Cit­i­zens and, as such, most of my bank­ing needs are han­dled there. I sin­gled out the trans­ac­tion that was put on Hansard by Al­la­har sim­ply be­cause he lied and mis­rep­re­sent­ed. I have not sought for­eign ex­change from oth­er in­sti­tu­tions,” said Row­ley.