Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) In­dar Ma­haraj and three oth­er se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at the state-owned com­pa­ny–Naz­im Sar­jad, man­ag­er, Con­struc­tion Ser­vices; Char­maine Mo­hamed, man­ag­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Cheryl Boodoos­ingh, man­ag­er, pro­cure­ment and con­tracts–have been sent on leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect pend­ing a fi­nan­cial au­dit in­to the state com­pa­ny.

The ac­tion was tak­en fol­low­ing the first meet­ing of the new­ly-ap­point­ed board of di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny which is now chaired by Ger­ry Brooks.

Maria Thorne, vice pres­i­dent, le­gal and cor­po­rate man­age­ment, will act as pres­i­dent and oth­er man­agers have been ap­point­ed to act for the three man­agers who are pro­ceed­ing on leave.

A brief state­ment from NGC said: "The de­ci­sion is con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice, giv­en the sig­nif­i­cant and pre­cip­i­tous de­cline in the com­pa­ny's per­for­mance in the last two years.

"A fi­nan­cial au­dit will com­mence short­ly and a rep­utable in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial firm has al­so been re­tained to con­duct oth­er spe­cif­ic au­dits.

"The board of NGC is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing prop­er cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, cog­nisant of NGC's strate­gic and com­mer­cial im­por­tance to the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the nat­ur­al gas-based sec­tor and the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"The board is al­so com­mit­ted to mak­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ven­tions to re­alise the full po­ten­tial of NGC."

There had been con­cerns in re­cent months about the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. The $4.5 bil­lion in prof­it af­ter tax re­port­ed by NGC for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2014, was low­er than $6.5 bil­lion for the pre­vi­ous year.

In May the com­pa­ny was down­grad­ed by Moody's Rat­ing Ser­vices to a cred­it rat­ing of Baa2 and its to­tal as­sets de­creased in 2014, com­pared to 2013. For the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2014 the com­pa­ny held $44.3 bil­lion in as­sets com­pared to 2013 when it held $45.1 bil­lion in as­sets.