?Trade union­ist Michael An­nisette is a di­rec­tor of at least six state com­pa­nies, in­ves­ti­ga­tions have re­vealed, and is ex­pect­ed to chair the board of Nipdec, fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day's forced res­ig­na­tion of state board supre­mo, Calder Hart.

An­nisette, along with his fel­low di­rec­tors, is un­der pres­sure to quit the board of Ude­cott. (See sto­ry on page 14). Checks on the web­sites of state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies re­vealed An­nisette is a di­rec­tor of Ude­cott, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nipdec), Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance (TTMF), Home Mort­gage Bank (HMB) and Port Au­thor­i­ty. TTMF is joint­ly owned by the NIB and the Gov­ern­ment in a 51/49 per cent ra­tio. An­nisette, who is al­so an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, re­ceives thou­sands of dol­lars a month to serve as a di­rec­tor on the six boards. Hart was chair­man of five of those com­pa­nies–Ude­cott, NIB, Nipdec, TTMF and HMB–un­til Sat­ur­day when he is­sued a res­ig­na­tion let­ter af­ter be­ing forced to do so by a se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, ac­cord­ing to sources.

A Nipdec in­for­ma­tion mem­o­ran­dum for an 18-year, 6.5 per cent $500 mil­lion bond de­scribes An­nisette as the deputy chair­man of Nipdec and it is ex­pect­ed that he will chair the next meet­ing of the board of the prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny. None of An­nisette's col­leagues on the the Ude­cott board sits on as many board as he does. Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, who is the deputy chair­man of Ude­cott, sits on the board of Nipdec. Nine­teen peo­ple serve on the five state boards boards that were head­ed by Hart. An­nisette is the on­ly one, apart from Hart, who is a di­rec­tor on all five boards. Seer­am Ma­haraj, who is a busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the tri-par­tite NIB board, sits on the board of Nipdec. Joan John, who is the deputy Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, sits as a Gov­ern­ment di­rec­tor on the board of NIB and on its sub­sidiary, Nipdec. In­ez Sinanan al­so sits as a Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the NIB board and on the board of Nipdec.

Mean­while, there are moves afoot among In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to ap­proach Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards with a view to hav­ing dis­cus­sions with him on An­nisette's sta­tus in the Sen­ate, sources close to the sen­a­tors dis­closed. One source, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty be­cause of the del­i­cate na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion, de­scribed An­nisette's state­ment, pub­lished in yes­ter­day's Guardian, that Ude­cott had done noth­ing wrong, as in­ap­pro­pri­ate as it came just be­fore the re­lease of the re­port of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.