Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Ash­ley Tay­lor, the pres­i­dent of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (Plipde­co), was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave by the board of the com­pa­ny in Ju­ly, three months be­fore his re­tire­ment in No­vem­ber.

How­ev­er, no no­tice of Tay­lor’s ad­min­is­tra­tive leave has been filed with the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) as Plipde­co is re­quired to do in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 64 of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act 2012.

The act re­quires re­port­ing is­suers to file no­tices of ma­te­r­i­al change with the TTSEC with­in three days of the oc­cur­rence and pub­lish ma­te­r­i­al change no­tices in two dai­ly news­pa­pers with­in sev­en days of the oc­cur­rence.

An in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion has since been launched in­to con­tracts ne­go­ti­at­ed dur­ing his 16-year tenure at Plipde­co.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the board’s de­ci­sion stemmed from the terms of the lease agree­ment with TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TT Iron). TT Iron ac­quired the de­funct Arcelor Mit­tal steel plant (which has been in liq­ui­da­tion since 2016 by Christo­pher Kelshall) in Point Lisas in Ju­ly and Plipde­co as its land­lord.

TT Iron, chaired by Joel Pem­ber­ton, agreed to pay US$30 mil­lion for the plant—a down­pay­ment of US$3 mil­lion with the re­main­ing US$27 mil­lion to be paid by De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

How­ev­er, Mit­tal had in­curred close to $44 mil­lion in rent out­stand­ing to Plipde­co at the time of clo­sure, and TT Iron’s ac­qui­si­tion of the plant would see it re­spon­si­ble for that debt.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that ini­tial­ly, Tay­lor ne­go­ti­at­ed the terms, in which TT Iron would op­er­ate for the first three years rent-free. How­ev­er, when the board raised is­sues with those terms, it was rene­go­ti­at­ed to six months rent-free. As part of the ini­tial pay­ment from the liq­uida­tor to Plipde­co, the terms were that $22 mil­lion was paid up­front, with the re­main­der of $22 mil­lion to be paid in Jan­u­ary 2025.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that the TT Iron lease hap­pened when Plipde­co adopt­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions’ (OPR) Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (PDAC) in­to its ad­min­is­tra­tion in June.

Plipde­co is ma­jor­i­ty-owned by the Gov­ern­ment. As a re­sult, Plipde­co sought le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter giv­en that Plipde­co sub-leas­es its leased state lands and di­rect­ly leas­es free­hold lands for com­pa­nies in the es­tate.

For his part, Pem­ber­ton said that while the agree­ment took a longer time than ex­pect­ed, it was ne­go­ti­at­ed on TT Iron’s be­half by the le­gal firm, Den­tons and Plipde­co’s ex­ter­nal coun­sel.

The board’s de­ci­sion led to the is­suance of a no­tice on Ju­ly 9 that the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, sched­uled for two days lat­er on Ju­ly 11, would be moved to a date in Sep­tem­ber.

The date has not yet been an­nounced.

Tay­lor was sent on leave on Ju­ly 29. He did not re­spond to the Sun­day Guardian for com­ment.

“It’s be­come like a witch hunt,” an em­ploy­ee told the Sun­day Guardian.

Dr Av­erne Pan­tin, the vice pres­i­dent of Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices, is now the com­pa­ny’s act­ing pres­i­dent.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that Pan­tin has be­gun a re­struc­tur­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Nei­ther Plipde­co chair­man Dr Daniel Dook­ie nor its act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive re­spond­ed to the Sun­day Guardian.

Plipde­co is a pub­licly trad­ed en­ti­ty with the State, through cor­po­ra­tion sole, own­ing 51 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to its an­nu­al re­port, the oth­er nine share­hold­ers with the largest block of shares are Masa In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed (7.6 per cent), Chan Ram­lal Lim­it­ed (6.67 per cent), and Tatil Life As­sur­ance Lim­it­ed (2.84 per cent). Bourse Nom­i­nee Ac­count Co (2.53 per cent), At­lantic In­vest­ments Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (2.52 per cent), Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (2.48 per cent), Riyad Khan (1.49 per cent), Olympic Man­u­fac­tur­ing Lim­it­ed (1.26 per cent), and George Aboud and Sons Lim­it­ed (1.22 per cent).

In its fi­nan­cial state­ment that end­ed June 30, Plipde­co said that as 2024 pro­gress­es, it in­tends to utilise its strong per­for­mance thus far as a plat­form to ad­vance its strate­gic plan and op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties.

“We are al­so pleased to wel­come TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed as a new ten­ant on the in­dus­tri­al es­tate. As a ten­ant, TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed will lever­age the cor­po­ra­tion’s ameni­ties on the in­dus­tri­al es­tate and port fa­cil­i­ties to en­hance their pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties. This move aligns with our com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing in­dus­tri­al growth and the pro­vi­sion of a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness to thrive. I wish to ex­tend ut­most grat­i­tude and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for all ef­forts ex­pend­ed thus far and ea­ger to con­tin­ue our col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts, which will cre­ate and strength­en syn­er­gies that favour the Cor­po­ra­tion,” Dook­ie said in his chair­man’s re­marks.