Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

A ten-page whistle­blow­er re­port out­lin­ing con­cerns with­in First Cit­i­zens, in par­tic­u­lar the con­duct and ac­tions of Deputy Chair­man Dr Ster­ling Frost, has been sub­mit­ted to its Board of Di­rec­tors for ur­gent ac­tion.

The re­port, com­plet­ed ac­cord­ing to the Bank’s Whistle­blow­ing Pol­i­cy #284, was sub­mit­ted in March 2026 and fo­cus­es on four main com­plaints: the al­leged mis­use of the Group’s whistle­blow­ing mech­a­nism as an in­stru­ment of co­or­di­nat­ed tar­get­ing; an al­leged struc­tur­al con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween a se­nior man­age­ment role and a board-lev­el po­si­tion that com­pro­mis­es the in­de­pen­dence of crit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion­al process­es; the al­leged over­reach of a board mem­ber in­to op­er­a­tional mat­ters, leav­ing the chief ex­ec­u­tive with­out the ex­ec­u­tive sup­port re­quired to lead the in­sti­tu­tion; and the Board’s al­leged fail­ure to dis­charge its fidu­cia­ry and reg­u­la­to­ry oblig­a­tions in mul­ti­ple ma­te­r­i­al re­spects.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the Board re­quest­ed that all whistle­blow­ing sub­mis­sions be dis­closed on an on­go­ing ba­sis, but there ex­ists no pro­vi­sion for the full Board or any in­di­vid­ual Board mem­ber to re­ceive them.

“The Board was not as­signed any in­ves­tiga­tive role un­der the pol­i­cy and had no ba­sis un­der it to re­ceive this in­for­ma­tion. The con­se­quence of this breach is se­ri­ous,” the re­port ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk al­leges.

As a re­sult, the re­port fur­ther notes that the “Deputy Chair­man was in re­ceipt of con­fi­den­tial whistle­blow­ing sub­mis­sions while mat­ters con­nect­ed to his own con­duct and in­ter­ests were ac­tive.”

“Em­ploy­ees who sub­mit­ted dis­clo­sures dur­ing this pe­ri­od did so in good faith re­liance on the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­tec­tions the pol­i­cy guar­an­tees. That guar­an­tee was bro­ken with­out their knowl­edge.”

There­fore, “the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion must de­ter­mine the full ex­tent of this ex­po­sure and what re­me­di­al steps are owed to those in­di­vid­u­als. The Board is asked to con­firm who au­tho­rised this dis­clo­sure prac­tice, whether the Gen­er­al Coun­sel raised any ob­jec­tion, and whether the Au­dit Com­mit­tee was in­formed,” the re­port states.

In­formed bank sources have flagged the re­cent de­par­ture of for­mer Group deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer - Op­er­a­tions and Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Neela Mooni­lal-Kissoon, on March 6 as a cause for con­cern.

Mooni­lal-Kissoon, who was pro­mot­ed to Frost’s po­si­tion when he re­tired from the Bank in 2023, had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at the group lev­el for sev­er­al sup­port units, in­clud­ing In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy, Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Hu­man Re­sources, Bank­ing Op­er­a­tions, Shared Ser­vices and Cor­po­rate Strat­e­gy.

With her de­par­ture, there are cur­rent­ly no deputy chief ex­ec­u­tives in two key ar­eas for the Bank’s growth.

On De­cem­ber 31, 2025, Sana Rag­bir’s act­ing ap­point­ment as Group deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive – Busi­ness Gen­er­a­tion end­ed, and she re­vert­ed to her po­si­tion as Gen­er­al Man­ag­er – Re­tail and Com­mer­cial. She was ap­point­ed to the act­ing post on Au­gust 22,2025 fol­low­ing the ap­point­ment of Ja­son Julien as act­ing Group CEO when Karen Dar­basie pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave. In Oc­to­ber, Julien was ap­point­ed First Cit­i­zens Chief Ex­ec­u­tive.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to get the Bank- a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, which is 60 per cent owned by the State - to com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions and cor­rec­tive ac­tions, but of­fi­cials did not re­spond last week. Nei­ther Chair­man of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Shankar Bidaisee nor Frost re­spond­ed. Frost was al­so sent a copy of the whistle­blow­er re­port for com­ment, but did not ac­knowl­edge the mes­sages.

Back in 2023, Frost had re­tired from the post of Group deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer – Op­er­a­tions and Ad­min­is­tra­tion at the bank at age 60. While there was an op­tion to ex­tend his time at the Bank for an ad­di­tion­al five years, the Bank had tak­en is­sue with some of the con­tent pub­lished in his book, “Cal­i­brat­ing Or­ga­ni­za­tion­al Cul­ture: A Di­alec­ti­cal Mod­el To­wards Com­pet­i­tive Ad­van­tage” which was launched a year ear­li­er.

Af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress won last year’s gen­er­al elec­tions, Frost re­turned to the bank and was ap­point­ed deputy chair­man at the same time at­tor­ney Bidaisee was ap­point­ed chair­man of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings.

Frost, who cur­rent­ly sits on the board of every First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings sub­sidiary, al­so sits on a key in­ter­nal com­mit­tee, with sources in­di­cat­ing that at every point in the Bank’s hi­er­ar­chy where the whistle­blow­er al­le­ga­tions have to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, Frost is ei­ther the chair­man or a com­mit­tee mem­ber.

Frost be­gan his tenure at the bank in 2016 and shared deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive du­ties with Ja­son Julien.

Pri­or to this, he worked in sev­er­al ca­pac­i­ties at Citibank North Amer­i­ca for the Latin Amer­i­ca Re­gion, based in Mi­a­mi, from 2007 to 2016. He left Citibank as Di­rec­tor/ Head Hu­man Re­sources.

The for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment had re­ject­ed Frost, who is the re­cip­i­ent of the coun­try’s high­est award- the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T- as the new di­rec­tor gen­er­al of its now de­funct Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty.

At that time, when asked whether he felt per­son­al­ly vic­timised by the de­ci­sion, he an­swered: “No, I don’t feel vic­timised or tar­get­ed by any­one. I re­main com­mit­ted to avail­ing our coun­try and its in­sti­tu­tions of the con­sid­er­able skills, knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence which I have gar­nered over my ca­reer.”

Frost re­ceived the ORTT for his con­tri­bu­tions in the spheres of Bank­ing, Ed­u­ca­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice.

He has a Mas­ter’s de­gree and a Doc­tor­ate in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and in Feb­ru­ary 2019, he was the first per­son at UWI to be ap­point­ed Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice: Man­age­ment Stud­ies.