Richard (not his re­al name) says he is not on­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the re­cent re­lease of the Ex­im­Bank for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion list—he is deeply con­cerned.

The sea­soned busi­ness­man, who built his com­pa­ny from the ground up and has thrived for decades, told the Busi­ness Guardian the dis­clo­sure is more than a breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. It sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent that un­der­mines the trust busi­ness­es place in the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

“There was no ben­e­fit to do­ing that. What is the ben­e­fit? Be­cause these are not the car­tel peo­ple. They are le­git­i­mate busi­ness peo­ple...We are the sec­ond largest GDP con­trib­u­tor to GDP in the coun­try. We em­ploy about 65,000 peo­ple af­ter the Gov­ern­ment. So, why pe­nalise us?,” he said.

Richard was one of sev­er­al busi­nes­sown­ers who spoke anony­mous­ly about the po­ten­tial fall­out from the pub­lic re­lease of the da­ta, fol­low­ing a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment last week­end, show­ing that phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and poul­try com­pa­nies have dom­i­nat­ed forex al­lo­ca­tions by the Ex­im­Bank over the past five years.

Be­yond the im­me­di­ate con­cerns of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, Richard al­so raised ques­tions about the se­lec­tive na­ture of the dis­clo­sure.

He ques­tioned why on­ly cer­tain com­pa­nies were in­clud­ed on the list, ask­ing whether that was done de­lib­er­ate­ly.

For him, the se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions are even more alarm­ing.

“In a coun­try al­ready strug­gling with vi­o­lent crime, kid­nap­pings and ex­tor­tion threats. This in­for­ma­tion could put my busi­ness, my em­ploy­ees and even my fam­i­ly in dan­ger. Crim­i­nals now have a clear idea of who is ac­cess­ing large sums of for­eign ex­change, and that ef­fec­tive­ly paints a tar­get on our backs,” he said.

Not will­ing to take any chances, Richard said he plans to in­crease se­cu­ri­ty at both his busi­ness place and his home—mea­sures that come with sig­nif­i­cant ad­di­tion­al costs.

In com­pet­i­tive in­dus­tries, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is not a lux­u­ry—it is a ne­ces­si­ty.

“Re­veal­ing the ex­act amounts of for­eign ex­change al­lo­cat­ed to in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies over the past five years com­pro­mis­es our strate­gic po­si­tion­ing, ex­pos­es sen­si­tive com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships and could erode part­ner­ships built on dis­cre­tion and mu­tu­al re­spect, an­oth­er busi­nes­sown­er said.

A third busi­nes­sown­er echoed that en­ti­ties are al­ready un­der pres­sure from ris­ing costs and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

“Adding this lay­er of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is reck­less and could have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. Ac­count­abil­i­ty and over­sight are nec­es­sary, but they must be bal­anced with the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens who are work­ing hard to keep their com­pa­nies afloat,” he said.

The com­mon sen­ti­ment is that while trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are vi­tal, they must be bal­anced with the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the very peo­ple work­ing hard to sus­tain the econ­o­my, the busi­nes­sown­er.

In an at­tempt to strike a bal­ance be­tween trans­paren­cy and se­cu­ri­ty, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad weighed in on the re­cent pub­li­ca­tion of the Ex­im­Bank for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion list.

While he ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial for neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions, he main­tained that the pub­lic, and even crim­i­nals, are savvy enough to un­der­stand that large-scale busi­ness trans­ac­tions are con­duct­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly, not with phys­i­cal cash.

“It’s not that these peo­ple are walk­ing around with large sums of US dol­lars. Every­thing nowa­days takes place elec­tron­i­cal­ly... I think that the pub­lic is savvy enough, knowl­edge­able enough, that they will un­der­stand that. Even the crim­i­nal el­e­ments will un­der­stand that,” Seep­er­sad ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he did not dis­miss the fears of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Seep­er­sad not­ed that the list could still send out a mes­sage to would-be crim­i­nals that “these peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly deal­ing with mas­sive sums of cash,” po­ten­tial­ly in­creas­ing the risk of crimes like kid­nap­ping for ran­som, de­spite the lack of phys­i­cal cur­ren­cy.

Seep­er­sad al­so recog­nised the Gov­ern­ment’s per­spec­tive, in this case, to in­crease trans­paren­cy, al­low­ing the pub­lic to see where pub­lic funds (or in this case, pub­lic-backed for­eign ex­change) are go­ing.

He ar­gued that the pub­lic re­lease of the in­for­ma­tion is a way to ad­dress a long-stand­ing is­sue of in­equitable for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion as he point­ed out that for a long time, the av­er­age per­son has strug­gled to ac­cess US dol­lars, a prob­lem that seems to stem from a dis­tri­b­u­tion is­sue rather than a lack of for­eign ex­change it­self.

In this vein, Seep­er­sad said that from the Gov­ern­ment’s point of view, mak­ing this in­for­ma­tion pub­lic is a way to ad­dress this is­sue head-on.

By ex­pos­ing who re­ceives what, it aims to fos­ter greater ac­count­abil­i­ty, re­duce hoard­ing, and po­ten­tial­ly lev­el the play­ing field for small­er busi­ness­es and av­er­age cit­i­zens.

“I do un­der­stand what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing. Whether or not they should have made that less pub­lic is de­bat­able. On the one hand, I ap­pre­ci­ate the trans­paren­cy that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to in­stil and that the Gov­ern­ment is po­ten­tial­ly try­ing to lev­el the play­ing field. You very well know that the av­er­age per­son out there can no longer sim­ply go in­to the bank to buy US dol­lars if you want to go on a va­ca­tion...At least from the fig­ures that you’re see­ing float­ing around, this would sug­gest that it’s not so much that we have a for­eign ex­change is­sue in terms of ac­cess to for­eign ex­change, but the is­sue is more of the eq­ui­ty of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the for­eign,” Seep­er­sad out­lined.

While the im­me­di­ate risks are a cause for se­ri­ous con­cern, this sit­u­a­tion al­so high­lights the need for a more com­pre­hen­sive, da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach to busi­ness se­cu­ri­ty.

There are ef­forts al­ready un­der­way to ad­dress this gap.

Seep­er­sad said the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine is em­bark­ing on a na­tion­al study to in­ves­ti­gate busi­ness vic­tim­i­sa­tion, in­clud­ing both tra­di­tion­al crimes and cy­ber­crime.

The goal is to de­vel­op a “toolk­it” and set of rec­om­men­da­tions to help busi­ness­es pro­tect them­selves.

This ini­tia­tive is a cru­cial step to­wards pro­vid­ing ac­tion­able, re­search-based ad­vice rather than leav­ing busi­ness­es to fend for them­selves.

“We are lit­er­al­ly in the process of con­duct­ing the re­search. We’ve al­ready have the fund­ing. We’ve de­vel­oped the in­stru­ment for da­ta col­lec­tion. We’ve pro­grammed it in­to tablet de­vices.

“We are sim­ply at the point of wait­ing for eth­i­cal clear­ance from the uni­ver­si­ty so that we could de­ploy the team but we are ready to go to the na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go to col­lect the da­ta so that we could pro­vide the an­swers in a da­ta-dri­ven and in­formed way,” Seep­er­sad ex­plained.

The goal is to com­plete the re­port by De­cem­ber and share it with busi­ness­es as well as rec­om­men­da­tions to help com­pa­nies strength­en their de­fens­es and re­duce their risk of falling vic­tim to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing cy­ber­crime.