Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to re­move Mike Wylie as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um could cost the com­pa­ny as much as $3 mil­lion.

Wylie was fired by the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion on Thurs­day af­ter a pro­tract­ed sick leave kept him away from the job for over two months.

He has can­cer and is cur­rent­ly re­cov­er­ing from ma­jor surgery and has been ad­vised by his doc­tors not to trav­el to T&T un­til his treat­ment is com­plete.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so re­moved the com­pa­ny's chair­man, Wil­fred Es­pinet and three oth­er Board mem­bers. The Prime Min­is­ter named his pri­vate at­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na as the new chair­man.

Wi­ley was re­tained by Her­itage af­ter a lengthy search by an in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruit­ment com­pa­ny, Egon Zehn­der In­ter­na­tion­al, be­tween June 28, 2018 and Au­gust 21, 2018.

The firm was paid $4,554,813.97 to re­cruit him.

Wylie was re­tained in Au­gust 2018 but was ab­sent from the coun­try on ex­tend­ed sick leave for the past two months.

On Tues­day Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that a com­mit­tee had been ap­point­ed to man­age the day-to-day af­fairs of the com­pa­ny in Wylie's ab­sence. Wylie has been out of the coun­try for the last two months fol­low­ing a di­ag­no­sis of a se­ri­ous ill­ness, but sources said his prog­no­sis looks good and he has been work­ing from his home in Texas.

While Board mem­ber Nigel Camp­bell has been act­ing in the CEO’s po­si­tion, the Board met last week and agreed that the arrange­ment was not good enough and that a com­mit­tee in­clud­ing se­nior man­age­ment, Board mem­bers, and Wylie would be formed to over­see the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the state com­pa­ny.

That de­ci­sion was placed be­fore Gov­ern­ment since Au­gust 13. There was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse un­til Thurs­day when Cab­i­net took the de­ci­sion to re­move Es­pinet, three oth­er Board mem­bers, and Wylie.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Es­pinet al­so clashed with the Gov­ern­ment over a di­rec­tive to re­move Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers as the com­pa­ny's au­di­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior in­sid­er PwC "pro­vid­ed out­sourc­ing fi­nan­cial ac­count­ing ser­vices for the com­pa­nies and re­cruit­ment ser­vices as well."

In an in­ter­view on Fri­day, Es­pinet said he was not up­set by the Gov­ern­ment's sud­den move on Thurs­day to re­vamp the en­tire Board and re­move him, but said he hoped that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has made the right de­ci­sion.

Im­bert, in his ca­pac­i­ty as Fi­nance Min­is­ter, acts as the share­hold­ers rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

"I have no is­sues if the share­hold­ers rep­re­sen­ta­tive has judged he had a bet­ter way," Es­pinet said in a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

"I con­sid­er it to be an im­per­a­tive that he made the de­ci­sion if he con­sid­ered it to be a more pro­duc­tive ap­proach. He is com­pelled to do what's in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny and the coun­try.

"I am not up­set about how things were han­dled. If what was done will pro­duce en­hanced re­sults then I will be the first to con­grat­u­late," he said.

Es­pinet re­fused to weigh on his re­place­ment, Michael Quam­i­na.

"I make no judg­ment on that," he said but added that he had heard the "opin­ion ex­pressed" that Quam­i­na may not have the ex­pe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to run an en­er­gy com­pa­ny.

He said there would be no fi­nan­cial prof­it for him in all of this and said there were no rules gov­ern­ing a pay­out as he was fired.

"Are you hint­ing that what goes around comes around? I nev­er took any pay or fees or any­thing. We did this be­cause we thought it will ben­e­fit all, all, all," he said.

The new struc­ture of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um al­so in­cludes Ar­lene Gorin-George who served as press sec­re­tary to Prime Min­is­ter from 2015 un­til two months ago when she was re­tained.

Gorin-George is now the head of In­ter­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Her­itage.

Just last year, just be­fore the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin in­to four sep­a­rate com­pa­nies, Es­pinet over­saw the hir­ing of Chi­nese-na­tion­al Chyau Lin. Lin signed a con­tract but be­fore he worked one day, was paid off some $1.7 mil­lion be­cause his post had be­come re­dun­dant.