Em­bat­tled An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd CEO Genevieve Jod­han is fir­ing back, ac­cus­ing her em­ploy­ers of “pros­e­cut­ing her in the press” by leak­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion which has tar­nished her rep­u­ta­tion be­yond re­pair.

In a two-page com­plaint sent to An­gos­tu­ra’s lead at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes SC on the Di­vali hol­i­day (No­vem­ber 6), Jod­han’s at­tor­ney ob­ject­ed to a se­ries of news­pa­per ar­ti­cles pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia and point­ed fin­gers at top of­fi­cials of the Laven­tille-based com­pa­ny, recog­nised glob­al­ly for An­gos­tu­ra Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters and pre­mi­um rum prod­ucts, as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for her tri­al by press.

Jod­han is un­der probe fol­low­ing a two-page con­fi­den­tial com­plaint filed un­der the State-owned com­pa­ny’s whistle­blow­er process. She has been away from work since Oc­to­ber 29 as ac­count­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC), as­sist­ed by the law firm of Fitzwilliam Stone Fur­ness-Smith and Mor­gan, in­ves­ti­gate the award of se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts to MH Tac­ti­cal Group and two of its sub­sidiaries—New Or­der Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NOSS) and Cor­po­rate As­set Pro­tec­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd (CAP)—and an­oth­er con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, Build­ing Spaces Ltd, amount­ing to over $2.2 mil­lion.

Jod­han is due to re­turn to work on No­vem­ber 27 and was sched­uled to meet with the au­di­tors last Mon­day to re­ceive a binder con­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion which need­ed her re­sponse. It could not be con­firmed last night whether Jod­han had, in fact, re­ceived the binder.

Jod­han, who re­cent­ly re­turned from a month-long study leave at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in the US, was called to a meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 29 where she was in­formed of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion specif­i­cal­ly in­to her in­volve­ment with re­spect to the ‘ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” in the award of the se­cu­ri­ty and build­ing con­tracts.

At that meet­ing, Jod­han met with the com­pa­ny chair­man Ter­rence Bharath, board di­rec­tors Ul­ric Miller, Kir­by An­tho­ny Hosang, In­grid Lash­ley, Michal An­drews and cor­po­rate com­mer­cial at­tor­ney Renée John­cil­la at the Hilton Trinidad.

“That meet­ing was pri­mar­i­ly for the pur­pose of re­quir­ing my client to ab­sent her­self from An­gos­tu­ra, while fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed,” wrote Jod­han’s at­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na.

“I should point out at this stage, that my client has been pro­vid­ed with no suf­fi­cient par­tic­u­lars of these ‘ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties’ as they re­late to her, pri­or to be (sic) re­quired to ab­sent her­self from the work­place. This, de­spite the ob­vi­ous­ly ex­treme (sic) se­ri­ous con­se­quences in­volved in re­quir­ing a CEO of such a high-pro­file com­pa­ny to ab­sent her­self from du­ties, and al­so bear­ing in mind that a PWC au­dit in­to pro­cure­ment of these con­tracts, has been on­go­ing since mid-2018.

“As such, suf­fi­cient par­tic­u­lars must have been avail­able, and ought to have been dis­closed for some pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sion be­fore any de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­quire her to ab­sent her­self from du­ties. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, one must won­der what could pos­si­bly prej­u­dice any fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, if the CEO was al­lowed to con­tin­ue with her du­ties.”

Quam­i­na re­ferred to the con­trast­ing treat­ment of for­mer An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in, who was al­lowed to re­main in of­fice while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done in­to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment claims made by a se­nior em­ploy­ee un­der the same whistle­blow­er process. Bal­go­b­in re­signed on March 27, 2018, af­ter a se­ries of protests by work­ers and watch­dog group, Fix­in T&T, out­side the com­pa­ny. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tion by for­mer judge of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son did not re­sult in any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

Quam­i­na al­so re­ferred to an ex­clu­sive ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian, dat­ed No­vem­ber 4, head­lined “Wild Spend­ing - Work­ers ex­pose shady deals,” say­ing “quite shock­ing­ly,” a copy of the whistle­blow­er com­plaint had been leaked to Guardian Me­dia which con­firmed his client’s sus­pi­cion that con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion was be­ing pro­vid­ed by An­gos­tu­ra of­fi­cials.

“I, there­fore, wish to record on my client’s be­half the strongest pos­si­ble ob­jec­tion to this mat­ter be­ing pros­e­cut­ed in the me­dia by your client (An­gos­tu­ra). An­gos­tu­ra’s de­ci­sion to re­quire my client to stay away from work has al­ready caused my client very se­ri­ous, al­most ir­repara­ble, dam­age, and to choose to pros­e­cute my client in the press is cer­tain­ly push­ing the dam­age past re­pair,” Quam­i­na stat­ed.

“I there­fore al­so wish to very re­spect­ful­ly re­quest that you ask your client to con­duct the process quick­ly, fair­ly and con­fi­den­tial­ly, which will in turn, per­mit my client to ful­ly par­tic­i­pate, and there­after have the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­pair what is left of her rep­u­ta­tion, which she has worked so very hard to build.

“On a fi­nal note, I am sure that you will agree that fair­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy would be best served, if my client was pro­vid­ed with suf­fi­cient no­tice of any spe­cif­ic con­cerns which your client’s in­ves­ti­ga­tors might have with re­spect to her in­volve­ment in the grant of these con­tracts along with all rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion pri­or to the con­duct of any in­ter­view.”

Whistle­blow­er in­fo sparked probe

Ac­cord­ing to the claims made by the anony­mous An­gos­tu­ra whistle­blow­er, New Or­der Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NOSS) moved in to as­sume con­trol of se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions at the com­pa­ny af­ter Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez was in­tro­duced to Jod­han by the for­mer chair­man, a claim stout­ly de­nied by Bal­go­b­in.

In the wake of the au­dit, An­gos­tu­ra board di­rec­tor Kir­by An­tho­ny Hosang re­signed with­out warn­ing on No­vem­ber 1, the same day the com­pa­ny’s chair­man host­ed a me­dia brief­ing at the com­pa­ny’s Sol­era Wine and Spir­its busi­ness in Port-of-Spain.

Bharath con­firmed the ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia re­port re­lat­ing to the CEO but as­sured share­hold­ers that the com­pa­ny was “very strong” de­spite a cur­rent probe in­to the award of some $2.2 mil­li­on in con­tracts to three se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and one con­struc­tion firm.

“Let me em­pha­sise that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion that An­gos­tu­ra is em­bark­ing up­on and con­tin­ues to em­bark up­on does not on­ly in­volve one in­di­vid­ual. It in­volves more,” Bharath said then.

He said the in­di­vid­u­als were “in the em­ploy­ment of An­gos­tu­ra” and re­fused to iden­ti­fy their port­fo­lios or the num­ber of peo­ple in­volved.

In his state­ment, Quam­i­na said the in­ten­tion of the chair­man’s press con­fer­ence was “ob­vi­ous­ly to fur­ther sen­sa­tion­alise the is­sue.”

Hosang has not re­spond­ed to queries from Guardian Me­dia seek­ing com­ment on the rea­son for his sud­den res­ig­na­tion.

An­gos­tu­ra was among the CL Fi­nan­cial sub­sidiaries ac­quired by the State af­ter the com­pa­ny failed to re­pay its debt from a 2009 gov­ern­ment bailout.

The shares of the com­pa­ny, which has an as­set base of over $3 bil­lion, were used to sup­port the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund which re­cent­ly raised $4 bil­lion to off­set the Na­tion­al Bud­get deficit.

The Gov­ern­ment said the ini­tial share of­fer was over­sub­scribed and plans a sec­ond ven­ture next year.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for An­gos­tu­ra, has main­tained his si­lence since news broke of the An­gos­tu­ra probe.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has been on a re­cent pub­lic cam­paign to stamp out cor­rup­tion at pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, has al­so not com­ment­ed on the probe at An­gos­tu­ra thus far. How­ev­er, ma­jor in­vestors in the NIF and An­gos­tu­ra share­hold­ers have ex­pressed con­cern about the al­le­ga­tions of “wild spend­ing” and mis­man­age­ment at the com­pa­ny.

In an email to Guardian Me­dia, Jod­han, who had ini­tial­ly been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave which was lat­er re­tract­ed af­ter she opt­ed to go on 20 days va­ca­tion leave, de­nied al­le­ga­tions of im­pro­pri­ety in the award of con­tracts to MH Tac­ti­cal Group, which is linked Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez, a mem­ber of the elite Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, a covert hand-picked unit com­pris­ing sol­diers and po­lice of­fi­cers which was part­ly re­spon­si­ble for yes­ter­day’s ma­jor drug and gun haul at Munroe Road, Cunu­pia.

An­gos­tu­ra em­ploy­ees claim Her­nan­dez was a fre­quent vis­i­tor to Jod­han’s of­fice at An­gos­tu­ra af­ter hours and the com­pa­ny se­cured CCTV footage as part of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He did not sign the vis­i­tor’s log, sources said.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said he per­son­al­ly con­duct­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter re­ports sur­faced iden­ti­fy­ing Her­nan­dez and has since cleared the of­fi­cer of any pos­si­ble reg­u­la­tion breach.

He not­ed for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice James Philbert had au­tho­rised the of­fi­cer’s in­volve­ment in a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny owned by his wife.