Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Since Richard No­ray was elect­ed pres­i­dent of East­ern Cred­it Union one year ago, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and one of its di­rec­tor were dis­missed, and two oth­er di­rec­tors were sus­pend­ed from the board.

And, dur­ing that time, the body tasked with su­per­vis­ing cred­it unions al­so launched an en­quiry, and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to East­ern’s op­er­a­tions.

No­ray, how­ev­er, has de­fend­ed his ac­tions since his ap­point­ment and blamed mis­chief mak­ers for the state of af­fairs.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian re­ceived doc­u­ments from a whis­tle-blow­er rais­ing con­cerns about the “take over of East­ern Cred­it Union by the Board of Di­rec­tors.”

On Tues­day No­ray was con­tact­ed to re­spond to those ac­cu­sa­tions.

On Fri­day No­ray and East­ern’s act­ing CEO Ke­ston Lash­ley met with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s board­room lo­cat­ed at La Joya, St Joseph to re­spond.

No­ray was elect­ed East­ern’s pres­i­dent in March last year.

The 2019 An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing which com­menced on De­cem­ber 5, 2020 was re­con­vened and con­clud­ed on March 27, 2021.

The 2020 AGM was held some eight months lat­er in No­vem­ber 2021 and No­ray was re-elect­ed to the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent.

That elec­tion was held vir­tu­al­ly.

Ques­tions were raised about seem­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, sug­gest­ing that some of the can­di­dates got more votes than num­ber of vot­ers who were reg­is­tered.

No­ray said this was be­cause the elec­tion was done where one de­vice could be used for sev­er­al mem­bers to vote so as not to dis­en­fran­chise mem­bers.

In De­cem­ber 2021 for­mer act­ing CEO Sher­ry-Ann Mc Don­ald-Joseph was sent on 30 days en­forced va­ca­tion leave which was then fol­lowed by ad­min­is­tra­tive leave be­fore she was sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed on March 23.

No­ray said this re­moval was jus­ti­fied based on what he called “sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments.”

“The for­mer deputy and then act­ing CEO, based on cer­tain de­vel­op­ments, the board felt that it was pru­dent and in good gov­er­nance to do what they did and they had to dis­con­tin­ue her em­ploy­ment with the or­gan­i­sa­tion based on a num­ber of ma­te­r­i­al con­cerns. That is why,” No­ray said.

“We did every­thing hu­man­ly and legal­ly pos­si­ble not to end up there be­cause we spoke to the per­son on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions and it just kept on and we dis­cov­ered so many oth­er things more than we had known about at the time. The per­son was sent on va­ca­tion, it was pure­ly on the ba­sis of send­ing the per­son on va­ca­tion to re­plen­ish but, dur­ing that time con­cerns we had that we felt were er­rors things turned out to sug­gest that they weren’t,” he said.

No­ray said if the dis­missal is con­test­ed in court, East­ern is pre­pared to an­swer.

“The board could have been ac­cused of dere­lic­tion of du­ty not to act as it did in re­la­tion to the then CEO based on the in­for­ma­tion we had,” he said.

Lash­ley was named East­ern’s sub­stan­tive deputy CEO last De­cem­ber and has been act­ing as CEO since Mc Don­ald-Joseph’s dis­missal.

Lash­ley be­lieves he is qual­i­fied for the po­si­tion.

“I am con­fi­dent it can with­stand any scruti­ny, qual­i­fied in terms of pa­per qual­i­fi­ca­tions, two de­gree and three mas­ters and com­plet­ing LEC now,” Lash­ley said.

Lash­ley said last De­cem­ber sev­er­al mem­bers of the cred­it union’s ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment all went on va­ca­tion at the same time.

“That was a re­flec­tion of the type of man­age­ment that was al­lowed to oc­cur at that time and we are try­ing to cor­rect and you would agree when you are try­ing to bring change there will be re­sis­tance,” he said.

East­ern has put out a va­can­cy ad­ver­tise­ment to fill the CEO po­si­tion.

“This is a new board and we can’t come in here like a bull in a chi­na shop. What we have come in here to do is to work with every­one and to see how best we can en­hance (the cred­it union,” No­ray said.

East­ern is cur­rent­ly in court with re­spect to the dis­missal of Ger­ard Matthews from the board.

No­ray said the dis­missal was as a re­sult of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by East­ern’s Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee which stat­ed he did not meet the req­ui­site “fit and prop­er” re­quire­ments.

The Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee is in­de­pen­dent from the Board, said No­ra.

“The Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee felt that the first di­rec­tor was de­clared to be un­fit and im­prop­er and they sent his in­for­ma­tion to the board and the board said we could not keep some­one on who has been de­clared as be­ing un­fit and im­prop­er. By Cen­tral Bank stan­dards that could have put in dan­ger the Bu­reau de Charge,” No­ray said.

No­ray said the Bu­reau de Charge makes East­ern unique be­yond oth­er cred­it unions and the Cen­tral Bank’s re­quire­ment for all di­rec­tors to be de­clared fit and prop­er is a pre­req­ui­site for it.

“We could not run that risk for one per­son,” he said.

No­ray said all of East­ern’s oth­er di­rec­tors have met the fit and prop­er re­quire­ments.

“Up to day I asked them to write Cen­tral bank to find out if every­one is okay, to make sure that we don’t have any con­cern. As far as I am aware at this time every­thing is okay,” he said.

No­ray said the two oth­er di­rec­tors who are cur­rent­ly on sus­pen­sion al­so ap­peared be­fore the Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee for is­sues with re­spect to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

He said a Spe­cial Gen­er­al meet­ing is to be held to de­ter­mine their fate in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The East­ern Board com­pris­es 12 peo­ple and has a quo­rum of sev­en.

No­ray said he be­lieves the is­sues in the board has led to the Com­mis­sion­er of Co­op­er­a­tives launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to East­ern.

“I don’t want to make any­thing against them but I want to put on the record that we have been treat­ed very harsh­ly by the com­mis­sion­ers’ of­fice,” he said.

No­ray said he has writ­ten the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice re­quest­ing a meet­ing since his ap­point­ment last March but he still has not been able to have a meet­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tives Char­maine Mc Mil­lan.

“This board felt that we were treat­ed very harsh­ly by the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice,” he said.

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “sad­den­ing”.

“I have spo­ken to the (Cred­it Union) league about it and the league said they would look in­to the mat­ter too be­cause it is un­pleas­ant,” he said.

No­ray said the Com­mis­sion­er of Co­op­er­a­tives did an in­spec­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion April last year which end­ed in De­cem­ber and, to date, they have not re­ceived the find­ings.

“In Feb­ru­ary they wrote to say they com­ing back in, this time it is an en­quiry,” he said.

That en­quiry, he said, has been com­plet­ed but still the find­ings have not been pre­sent­ed.

“They just fin­ished that so we are wait­ing to hear what are the find­ings of it. Every­thing they asked for they were giv­en,” he said.

No­ray said he has dis­cussed the mat­ter with at­tor­neys.

“I am an open book. Once you know you have noth­ing to hide then there is no need to try to hide what there isn’t to hide so I will meet with any­body,” No­ray added.

No­ray said he tried to cod­i­fy the rules of the cred­it union be­cause these things were not im­ple­ment­ed be­fore and were a “recipe for crazi­ness.

“That was main­ly to be­gin the process of re­vers­ing the ter­ri­ble gov­er­nance we met here to be­gin to put it back on course,” he said.

At the last AGM No­ray said a $4 mil­lion draw­ing plan for a prop­er­ty in­vest­ment known as Las Vivien­das in Va­len­cia was writ­ten off.

The prop­er­ty cost $5 mil­lion.

“It was a blow to me but I had to ex­plain to them in the man­age­ment ad­dress that we were com­pelled to do that be­cause it was the cor­rect thing to do,” he said.

East­ern’s as­sets are val­ued at over $2 bil­lion and is the largest cred­it union in the coun­try.