The mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) does not have a legal­ly con­sti­tut­ed board of gov­er­nors.

Checks by Guardian Me­dia have re­vealed that the tenure of three mem­bers end­ed on April 19, 2019 and there is no doc­u­men­ta­tion or con­fir­ma­tion that those three have been re-ap­point­ed or that new re­place­ment mem­bers have been sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for ap­proval. This means that for al­most a month, there has was no way that the HSF could have con­vened a meet­ing to make de­ter­mi­na­tions on for­eign in­vest­ments.

The three out-tenured board mem­bers in­clude Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hi­laire. His lapsed ap­point­ment is per­haps the most crit­i­cal, as ac­cord­ing to the HSF guide­lines the fund must al­ways have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Cen­tral Bank.

Ac­cord­ing to the HSF Act, there must be at least three mem­bers to form a quo­rum in or­der to make de­ci­sions on in­vest­ments but that is not now the case, as there are on­ly two ex­ist­ing, le­gal mem­bers on the board.

Dur­ing his Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said that the HSF now stood at “an all-time high of US$6.1 bil­lion.” It stood at US$6.0 bil­lion in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

But ques­tions are now be­ing raised about the fund’s abil­i­ty to func­tion and make quick in­vest­ment de­ci­sions with­out a quo­rum or an ef­fec­tive board.

Ac­cord­ing to a for­mer HSF board mem­ber, who did not want to be named, the en­tire sit­u­a­tion smacks of “to­tal dis­re­spect.”

“The ram­i­fi­ca­tions are that the board can­not func­tion,” he said.

“This means that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, for the past month, did not go to Cab­i­net to re­new the ap­point­ments or ap­point new mem­bers. That is a to­tal dis­re­spect to the coun­try,” he said.

The for­mer board mem­ber said while the board can tech­ni­cal­ly con­tin­ue to func­tion “op­er­a­tional­ly,” no new de­ci­sions on in­vest­ments or pol­i­cy de­ter­mi­na­tions can be made with­out a quo­rum or a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cen­tral Bank.

In a March 2019 pre­sen­ta­tion in Mozam­bique, Hi­laire de­tailed the du­ties of the HSF. He was speak­ing un­der the ban­ner of “Sov­er­eign Wealth Funds: Prac­ti­cal Ex­pe­ri­ence and Lessons from Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Hi­laire said then that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (MOF) ap­points the board, makes de­posits and with­drawals ac­cord­ing to the act and re­ports to the Par­lia­ment an­nu­al­ly.

The board is re­spon­si­ble for the in­vest­ment pol­i­cy, in­clud­ing the Strate­gic As­set Al­lo­ca­tion (SAA), per­for­mance re­views and re­ports to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Ac­cord­ing to Hi­laire’s chart then, there were no in­ter­nal gov­ern­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions to the HSF for the five years be­tween the years 2014-2018.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDF Act, a ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed board is nec­es­sary as the “board shall (a) de­ter­mine by res­o­lu­tion, the gov­er­nance struc­ture and the op­er­a­tional and in­vest­ment guide­lines of the fund based on pru­den­tial stan­dards used by the Cen­tral Bank for in­vest­ments of a sim­i­lar na­ture; (b) be re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of the fund; (c) re­view from time to time, the per­for­mance of the fund; and (d) per­form such oth­er re­lat­ed du­ties as may be nec­es­sary to car­ry out the pur­pos­es of the fund.

In March 2017, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it had with­drawn US$251 mil­lion (TT$1,712,200,000) from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF). Months ear­li­er, it had with­drawn TT$2.5 mil­lion in May 2016.

Im­bert said then that the mon­ey would be used for the fi­nanc­ing of the 2017 Bud­get, specif­i­cal­ly the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP).

In 2017 as well, Im­bert an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment planned to split the HSF in­to two sep­a­rate funds - the main part of the ex­ist­ing fund in the Her­itage com­po­nent and the re­main­der to be al­lo­cat­ed to the Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

Ef­forts to con­tact Im­bert yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not re­turn calls or re­spond to text mes­sages.