On Mon­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched a scathing at­tack on an un­named min­is­ter of her ad­min­is­tra­tion, who she ac­cused of cavourt­ing with “the same crooked con­trac­tors and PNM fi­nanciers and cor­rupt fake elites.” This is the speech in which our Prime Min­is­ter threat­ened to “buss your head” of any min­is­ter found guilty of aw­ful crime of talk­ing with one of their fel­low coun­try­men.

This is al­so the speech in which she called on the man­age­ment of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) to “sort it­self out” with­in two years, crit­i­cis­ing the man­age­ment for op­er­at­ing an air­line that does not have “one sin­gle route that is prof­itable.” She al­so lam­bast­ed the na­tion­al air­line for spend­ing over $60 mil­lion to en­gage EY and PwC to con­duct au­dits, while em­ploy­ing 86 peo­ple in its fi­nance de­part­ment.

Notes to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar: If none of CAL’s routes are prof­itable, then sure­ly the Gov­ern­ment has the fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ei­ther close down the air­line or di­vest it; there are very few com­pa­nies in T&T that op­er­ate with­out an ex­ter­nal au­di­tor, no mat­ter how large or small is the com­pa­ny’s fi­nance de­part­ment. There is a rea­son that the Com­pa­nies Act men­tions au­di­tors 133 times.

But the most alarm­ing as­pect of the Prime Min­is­ter’s speech on Mon­day, in my view, was when she called out three fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, while fo­cussing on one of them.

Fol­low­ing is a ver­ba­tim re­pro­duc­tion of what the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said about the three banks:

“The rest of the coun­try must not set­tle for scraps while the fake elite up in the north en­joy the fat of our land.

“Tonight, I’m warn­ing the boards and man­age­ments of Re­pub­lic Bank, First Cit­i­zens Bank and Ex­Im Bank, to sort them­selves out. These in­sti­tu­tions are not func­tion­ing in the best in­ter­ests of our cit­i­zens. They op­er­ate in the in­ter­est of a few.

“Imag­ine this, this re­al­ly hap­pened, it is a true sto­ry. Imag­ine a one per­center walks in­to the of­fice of Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John. He comes in with a fold­er with pa­per and puts the pa­per on the desk, and you know what is in that pa­per? Puts that pa­per on her desk and he tells her he wants land at In­vaders Bay. He said he’s get­ting a loan from Re­pub­lic Bank to buy the land. Of course at re­duced, dis­count­ed prices.

“And guess what, he is then get­ting a loan from the same Re­pub­lic Bank to build a build­ing, and then the same Re­pub­lic Bank will rent the build­ing from him to al­low him to re­pay the loan and make a prof­it. This is a re­al sto­ry. That is what has been hap­pen­ing in se­cret, be­hind closed doors un­der the for­mer regime. Thank God you put us in­to of­fice so that we can ex­pose them for their deal­ings. This sto­ry I tell you, I am told that the same thing is hap­pen­ing at First Cit­i­zens Bank.

“There is no trans­paren­cy, no fair­ness, just in-house deal mak­ing. That is why I have in­struct­ed my min­is­ters to fill all va­can­cies across all min­istries. Fill them to­tal­ly and trans­par­ent­ly, Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Let’s fill the va­can­cies across the ser­vices and cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’m told there are about 20,000 va­can­cies ...”

Some ques­tions and points:

1) Why did Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar think it was ap­pro­pri­ate to use a pub­lic, po­lit­i­cal plat­form to ex­pose a project pro­pos­al that the re­gion’s largest and most prof­itable fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion may have en­ter­tained with a mem­ber of T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty?

2) Is it ap­pro­pri­ate for the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try to be­smirch one of the state’s largest and most prof­itable as­sets, es­pe­cial­ly a com­pa­ny in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor?

Among the top 10 largest share­hold­ers of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), ac­cord­ing to its 2024 an­nu­al re­port, are the fol­low­ing share­hold­ers, as at Oc­to­ber 15, 2024:

Name*Or­di­nary shares*%

Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund*49,021,779*29.94

Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board*30,811,955*18.82

Cor­po­ra­tion Sole*4,430,161*2.71

From my cal­cu­la­tion, these three en­ti­ties owned 84,263,895 RFHL shares, as at Oc­to­ber 15, 2024. That means those three en­ti­ties—two of which are owned by the state and the third con­trolled by the state—owned 51.43 per cent of the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny’s is­sued share cap­i­tal of 163,833,584 shares.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment ‘State en­ter­pris­es board of di­rec­tors, ap­point­ments list­ing by own­er­ship, Jan­u­ary 2024,’ the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, to give NIF its full name, is 100 per cent owned by the Gov­ern­ment, its ad­dress is lev­el 2 of the Min­istry of Fi­nance build­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain and its chair is Jen­nifer Lutch­man, a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance. NIF is ful­ly con­trolled by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the en­ti­ty in which state as­sets are vest­ed.

—Be­tween NIF and Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the state owns 53,451,940 RFHL shares, which is 32.62 per cent of the com­pa­ny. Un­der most cir­cum­stances, any joint­ly held en­ti­ties own­ing more than 29.99 per cent of a list­ed com­pa­ny should have been re­quired to make takeover bid for the com­pa­ny. The fact that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion did not di­rect Cor­po­ra­tion Sole to make a takeover bid for RFHL re­mains a mys­tery to me.

In ef­fect, by ut­ter­ing the words she did, T&T’s leader de­lib­er­ate­ly at­tempt­ed to dam­age a state-con­trolled in­vest­ment that has a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of $18.18 bil­lion (US$2.69 bil­lion).

—The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board is con­trolled by the Gov­ern­ment by virtue of its con­trol of the in­sti­tu­tion’s board. The in­vest­ment de­ci­sions of the NIB can be di­rect­ed by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance) by virtue of his con­trol of the ap­point­ments to the NIB's in­vest­ment com­mit­tee. The NIB’s in­vest­ment com­mit­tee com­pris­es the chair of the in­sti­tu­tion, its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer as well as “three oth­er mem­bers of the Board nom­i­nat­ed re­spec­tive­ly by the Min­is­ter (of Fi­nance), the di­rec­tors who are nom­i­nees of busi­ness and the di­rec­tors who are nom­i­nees of labour.”

The NIB’s in­vest­ment com­mit­tee al­so com­pris­es “three oth­er per­sons not mem­bers of the Board nom­i­nat­ed re­spec­tive­ly by the Min­is­ter, the di­rec­tors who are nom­i­nees of busi­ness and the di­rec­tors who are nom­i­nees of labour.”

From my cal­cu­la­tion, five of the nine mem­bers of the NIB’s in­vest­ment com­mit­tee would vote as di­rect­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

There­fore, if the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to re­place RFHL chair­man, Vin­cent Pereira, or the en­tire board, all the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has to do is re­quest a spe­cial meet­ing of share­hold­ers and pro­vide the ap­pro­pri­ate in­struc­tions to the state rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

3) What is the link be­tween the Gov­ern­ment fill­ing all of the va­can­cies in the pub­lic ser­vice and the loan prac­tices of the banks in T&T?

4) In ex­pos­ing the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Min­is­ter Jear­lean John and the un­named so-called one per­center, is the Prime Min­is­ter erod­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a mem­ber of her ad­min­is­tra­tion can ever have a pri­vate dis­cus­sion with a mem­ber of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty?

5) Does the Prime Min­is­ter be­lieve she can run T&T suc­cess­ful­ly with­out the sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty she caus­ti­cal­ly de­scribes as the one per cent?

Dis­clo­sure: The au­thor main­tains sev­er­al ac­counts at Re­pub­lic Bank and owns four shares in RFHL