By my cal­cu­la­tion, the three-year term of of­fice of the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, comes to an end on De­cem­ber 22, 2023, which is just over a month away.

At the end of his cur­rent term of of­fice, Dr Hi­laire would have served as Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor for eight years.

Dr Hi­laire’s ini­tial five-year term of of­fice as Gov­er­nor, which be­gan on De­cem­ber 23, 2015, came in con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances.

He re­placed his pre­de­ces­sor, Mr Jwala Ram­bar­ran, whose ap­point­ment was re­voked by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net on De­cem­ber 22, 2015.

Mr Ram­bar­ran’s ap­point­ment was re­voked fol­low­ing a speech he de­liv­ered at the Fifth Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Fo­rum on De­cem­ber 4, 2015, host­ed by the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, dur­ing which he named the com­pa­nies that were among the largest pur­chasers of for­eign ex­change in the three pre­vi­ous years.

On De­cem­ber 12, 2015, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is­sued a state­ment in which he sought to cor­rect a me­dia re­port stat­ing that he told the Par­lia­ment that Gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of dis­miss­ing the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank.

In the state­ment, Dr Row­ley said: “If it turns out that the Gov­er­nor is dis­missed it would be as a re­sult of a se­ries of his own ac­tions and not by any ac­tion ini­ti­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“The Gov­ern­ment would wish to make it quite clear that no pub­lic of­fi­cer, re­gard­less of what of­fice he or she may hold, is be­yond the req­ui­site dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures which are open to the em­ploy­er act­ing law­ful­ly in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

But on June 22, 2022, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that the ter­mi­na­tion of Ram­bar­ran’s ap­point­ment (the “req­ui­site dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures”) on the ad­vice of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was “se­ri­ous­ly flawed”.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that Mr Ram­bar­ran’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and to a fair hear­ing, in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice, were breached and that the de­ci­sion was il­le­gal, null and void, ac­cord­ing to the con­tem­po­rary re­port by Guardian Me­dia’s court re­porter Derek Achong. 

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that if there were con­cerns that Mr Ram­bar­ran’s al­leged con­duct was in breach of as­pects of the Cen­tral Bank Act and Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, both had pro­vi­sions for crim­i­nal charges to be laid, which Mr Ram­bar­ran would have had to de­fend be­fore a mag­is­trate. 

“Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed that if there was a breach of ei­ther of the acts that there was a rem­e­dy to deal with that breach,” said the judge.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so ruled that Mr Ram­bar­ran was en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion, which he as­sessed in Oc­to­ber last year to be a to­tal of $5,470,055.28, most of which would have been his salary of $173,435 a month for the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber 23, 2015 to Ju­ly 16, 2017.

The lat­ter date is when his tenure would have come to an end if he had not been fired.

On the is­sue of Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment, I would sim­ply point out that sec­tion 56 (1) of the Cen­tral Bank Act states: “Ex­cept in so far as may be nec­es­sary for the due per­for­mance of its ob­jects, and sub­ject to sec­tion 8 of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, every di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer and em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall pre­serve and aid in pre­serv­ing se­cre­cy with re­gard to all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the af­fairs of the Bank, any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion or per­son reg­is­tered un­der the In­sur­ance Act or of any cus­tomers there­of that may come to his knowl­edge in the course of his du­ties.”

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s sug­ges­tion that Mr Ram­bar­ran could have been pros­e­cut­ed un­der the Cen­tral Bank Act or the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, which con­tains sim­i­lar pro­hi­bi­tions on the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion, is in­ter­est­ing.

But con­sid­er rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age T&T’s Cen­tral Bank would have suf­fered if its gov­er­nor had been hauled be­fore the courts on the sum­ma­ry charge of fail­ing to pre­serve se­cre­cy “with re­gard to all mat­ters.”

I be­lieve main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant for all cen­tral bank em­ploy­ees, es­pe­cial­ly gov­er­nors. It would be un­think­able, for ex­am­ple, for the cur­rent Gov­er­nor of the Bank of Eng­land, An­drew Bai­ley, to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a pub­lic speech to name the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in Eng­land that are un­der en­hanced scruti­ny by that coun­try’s cen­tral bank.

If Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment is on ap­peal, it would be im­por­tant to get the Privy Coun­cil’s think­ing on this mat­ter.

Poi­soned chal­ice?

The rea­son for out­lin­ing some of the de­tails of the pre­ma­ture end to Mr Ram­bar­ran’s term of of­fice is to make the point that the job of Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T is not with­out risks.

While the 2015 salary of $173,435 a month ($2,081,208 a year), plus oth­er perquisites that were not in­clud­ed in the Ram­per­sad judg­ment, means that our Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nors are well com­pen­sat­ed, the job ap­pears not to be risk free...as the fate of Mr Ram­bar­ran sug­gests.

A few weeks be­fore Dr Hi­laire was reap­point­ed in De­cem­ber 2020, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion took the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (FATF Com­pli­ance) Bill to Par­lia­ment. That leg­is­la­tion amend­ed a to­tal of 11 laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­clud­ing the Mu­tu­al As­sis­tance in Crim­i­nal Mat­ters Act, the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act and the Cen­tral Bank Act.

The leg­is­la­tion was as­sent­ed to by the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, who was then Paula-Mae Weekes, on De­cem­ber 18, 2020. The leg­is­la­tion is await­ing procla­ma­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Par­lia­ment web­site.

Com­ment­ing on the leg­is­la­tion, which pro­vid­ed for a min­i­mum term of three years and a max­i­mum term of five years, Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert said: “That gives us the nec­es­sary con­ti­nu­ity and it al­so gives us the nec­es­sary pe­ri­od of time to do suc­ces­sion plan­ning and groom suc­ces­sors to Dr Hi­laire when he re­tires in De­cem­ber 2023.”

In a De­cem­ber 2020 com­men­tary on the amend­ment to the Cen­tral Bank Act, T&T’s best eco­nom­ic com­men­ta­tor, Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, stat­ed: “The UNC’s trou­bling as­saults pale in com­par­i­son with the sledge­ham­mer the PNM has tak­en to the Cen­tral Bank over the last five years...The Gov­er­nor and Deputy Gov­er­nors, in­stead of in­hab­it­ing of­fices with some se­cu­ri­ty of tenure con­sis­tent with their in­de­pen­dence, are now to be treat­ed like the po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees to any state en­ter­prise or statu­to­ry board.

“It al­so sug­gests that the con­sid­er­a­tions rel­a­tive to the se­lec­tion of a Gov­er­nor or Deputy Gov­er­nor are so ar­bi­trary and whim­si­cal that the Gov­ern­ment can re­alise af­ter three years that the per­son they ap­point­ed is not up to the task.”

The law, as it stands, al­lows for the ap­point­ment to a three-year term as Gov­er­nor. But would the best can­di­date for the po­si­tion, some­one who is not ap­proach­ing re­tire­ment age, ac­cept a three-year term?

Does a three-year term pro­vide a Gov­er­nor with enough time to im­ple­ment the plans that he or she may have to im­prove the per­for­mance of the Cen­tral Bank?

Or would a three-year term be viewed be viewed by ap­pli­cants as a means by which the Gov­ern­ment can fur­ther en­trench its di­rec­tion of the Cen­tral Bank on the ma­jor is­sues of mon­e­tary, fis­cal and for­eign ex­change poli­cies?