The probe against em­bat­tled CEO of An­gos­tu­ra Genevieve Jod­han, who is ac­cused of flout­ing the com­pa­ny’s pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy in the award of sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts, is near­ing com­ple­tion and she is like­ly to quit as part of a set­tle­ment deal.

De­tails or the fi­nal agree­ment are still be­ing ap­proved by at­tor­neys in­volved in the mat­ter and Jod­han is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive an undis­closed sum as part of the agree­ment, re­li­able sources told Guardian Me­dia.

Jod­han, 53, who has been on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave since last Oc­to­ber, was the sub­ject of two sep­a­rate au­dits which ex­am­ined the award of con­tracts amount­ing to over one mil­lion dol­lars to MH Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Group, New Or­der Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices and Cor­po­rate As­set Pro­tec­tion — all aligned to Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez, a key mem­ber of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, an elite unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

An­gos­tu­ra is one of the crown jew­els ac­quired by the State af­ter the 2009 bailout of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group. It is a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny and mak­ers of the world-renowned An­gos­tu­ra Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters and a host of pre­mi­um rums, in­clud­ing 1919.

Ac­count­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers was called in to in­ves­ti­gate the award of sev­er­al con­tracts in mid-2018. The com­pa­ny al­so con­duct­ed its own probe.

In Oc­to­ber 2018, Jod­han said she was aware that “there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pro­cure­ment prac­tices ini­ti­at­ed as a con­se­quence of a com­plaint made through the com­pa­ny’s Whis­tle Blow­er Process, and ex­pects that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be fair, and com­plet­ed ex­pe­di­tious­ly.”

She said then that as the CEO of a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, she “has al­ways held the in­ter­est and wel­fare of all em­ploy­ees and stake­hold­ers in mind in the con­duct of the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness and will con­tin­ue to so do.” Jod­han al­so de­fend­ed her ac­tions, say­ing they were law­ful and in keep­ing with the pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy of the com­pa­ny.

While Jod­han was em­pow­ered to au­tho­rise con­tracts up to the sum of $500,000 with­out board ap­proval, the con­tracts un­der re­view ex­ceed­ed that sum and were not in keep­ing with a di­rec­tive of the board. Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s pro­cure­ment prac­tice, it was usu­al to in­vite three ten­ders for pub­lic con­tracts to en­sure trans­paren­cy.