Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

In less than two weeks both the chair­man and the chair­man of the au­dit com­mit­tee at An­gos­tu­ra Ltd (AL) and An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd (AHL) have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

Mau­rice Suite re­signed as chair­man and di­rec­tor of the board at both en­ti­ties on Mon­day.

This comes on the heels of Joseph Teix­eira who re­signed from both en­ti­ties on March 31.

An­gos­tu­ra was thrust in­to the na­tion­al spot­light ear­li­er this week when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert sig­nalled the gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to dis­pose of it "in an or­der­ly fash­ion."

"There was nev­er any in­ten­tion when the Cli­co bailout be­gan and through the last sev­er­al years un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion that we would na­tion­alise these com­pa­nies. Re­pub­lic Bank is a pri­vate com­pa­ny, there was nev­er any in­ten­tion to con­vert that to a gov­ern­ment bank. We al­ready have a gov­ern­ment bank, First Cit­i­zens, we do not need two gov­ern­ment banks in this coun­try. Sim­i­lar­ly there was nev­er any in­ten­tion to make An­gos­tu­ra the state's rum com­pa­ny, we don't plan to do that. So that these as­sets are there they will be dis­posed of in an or­der­ly fash­ion, it could be put on the Stock Ex­change, it could be sold to in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, large in­vestors may come along and pur­chase the as­sets, the orig­i­nal share­hold­ers of Colo­nial Life the thing may re­cov­er to a point where they get the as­sets back and so on," Im­bert said dur­ing an in­ter­view with CNC3 ear­li­er this week.

Suite was ap­point­ed as di­rec­tor and chair­man of the boards of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd and An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd on Oc­to­ber 29.

He re­placed Yet­ming who re­signed on Oc­to­ber 26.

The com­po­si­tion of the AHL board at that date were Suite, Teix­eira, Mar­lon Hold­er, Kr­ish­na Bood­hai and Al­bert George Tom Yew.

The AL board at that date com­prised these five and in­clud­ed AL's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Robert Wong and the com­pa­ny's Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer (COO) Ro­mesh Singh.

On March 17 Suite signed off AHL's fi­nan­cial state­ments end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2015.

"The Group has end­ed the year with prof­it af­ter tax of $163.7 mil­lion, an im­prove­ment of $10.3 mil­lion against the pri­or year. Through care­ful man­age­ment of ex­pens­es and tar­get­ed brand in­vest­ment the Group has main­tained prof­itabil­i­ty in spit of in­creas­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic pres­sures, and is keen to car­ry these mea­sures for­ward to 2016," it stat­ed.

No word on­res­ig­na­tions

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed AL's ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of le­gal ser­vices and com­pa­ny sec­re­tary Lyn Lopez for com­ment on the res­ig­na­tions of Suite and Teix­eira and clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the quo­rum need­ed for the boards but got no re­sponse.

At­tempts to con­tact Suite al­so proved un­suc­cess­ful.

Suite is the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

"Mr Suite has been per­form­ing the du­ties of per­ma­nent sec­re­tary since Feb­ru­ary 2004 with the ex­cep­tion of two years when he was at­tached to the World Bank as a se­nior ad­vi­sor in the Of­fice of the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor for Brazil," the Fi­nance Min­istry's web­site sat­ed.

"He has served as per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in both the Eco­nom­ic Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion and the In­vest­ments Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, as well as the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the for­mer Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism."