For­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is baf­fled by the sud­den re­vo­ca­tion of Dr Alvin Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment as Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, es­pe­cial­ly if it stemmed from his re­fusal to name the coun­try’s top for­eign ex­change users.

Im­bert said he first learned of Hi­laire’s dis­missal af­ter read­ing a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle on the mat­ter.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day, Im­bert ad­mit­ted he had lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the ter­mi­na­tion. How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that if the is­sue in­volved pres­sure on the for­mer gov­er­nor to dis­close the names of in­di­vid­u­als who re­ceived for­eign ex­change through com­mer­cial banks, such an act would con­sti­tute a crim­i­nal of­fence.

“If now the present gov­er­nor was be­ing pres­sured by the Gov­ern­ment to re­veal the names of per­sons who were in re­ceipt of for­eign ex­change and he de­clined and he got fired for that, that would be very sur­pris­ing.

“The mes­sage that is com­ing is quite as­ton­ish­ing... that the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to get him to re­lease per­son­al and pri­vate in­for­ma­tion and he said ‘no’ and they fired him. That’s the mes­sage. But I don’t know what else went on.”

Im­bert drew par­al­lels be­tween Hi­laire’s dis­missal and the 2015 ter­mi­na­tion of his pre­de­ces­sor, Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

Ram­bar­ran’s ap­point­ment was re­voked in 2015, just weeks af­ter he raised con­cerns about the for­eign ex­change mar­ket dur­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s bi-an­nu­al Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Fo­rum.

Ram­bar­ran re­vealed the top five users of for­eign ex­change by sec­tor over the pre­vi­ous three years and pub­licly de­clared, based on CBTT da­ta, that the coun­try was in a re­ces­sion. His dis­missal fol­lowed short­ly there­after and in 2022, a High Court rul­ing found that Ram­bar­ran had been wrong­ful­ly ter­mi­nat­ed and award­ed him more than $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion. That de­ci­sion was up­held by the Court of Ap­peal in Feb­ru­ary of this year.

“The is­sue with the pre­vi­ous gov­er­nor was over the pub­li­ca­tion of the largest users of for­eign ex­change in the coun­try. That was the is­sue. And there were many le­gal opin­ions that that was a breach of the law, at the time, ok,” Im­bert said.

An­oth­er for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter, Karen Nunez-Tesheira, ac­knowl­edged that Hi­laire may have re­lied on a code of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Nunez-Tesheira be­lieves the mat­ter is like­ly to end up be­fore the courts.

“It may be that the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to pay the price for that, to have the new gov­er­nor in­stalled, some­one who they feel that will (re­spond to their de­mands) on crit­i­cal is­sues and it seems there are crit­i­cal is­sues. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al is­sue was one and the oth­er is­sue, of course, is nam­ing the per­sons who were the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the gov­ern­ment’s for­eign ex­change. So per­haps they’re pre­pared to even lose at Privy Coun­cil.”

She em­pha­sised that a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor and the Gov­ern­ment is cru­cial, giv­en their shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial health.

How­ev­er, she cau­tioned de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples should nev­er be com­pro­mised es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to an of­fice of such na­tion­al im­por­tance.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath has crit­i­cised, what he said was Gov­ern­ment’s hypocrisy in risk­ing sig­nif­i­cant costs to tax­pay­ers ow­ing to the fall­out that could come.

“What we don’t want to hap­pen, and what the Gov­ern­ment has been telling us since, over the last few weeks, is sim­ply that they are not go­ing to be wast­ing mon­ey in the way the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment wast­ed mon­ey. If, how­ev­er, they adopt a po­si­tion that could lead the gov­ern­ment to be in con­tra­dic­tion to the law and that could cause the State to have to pay enor­mous sums in like man­ner as the PNM did when they had dis­missed Jwala Ram­bar­ran, that would be of con­cern.”

Ra­goonath al­so said the time has come to stop the politi­ci­sa­tion of top State ap­point­ments.

Ef­forts to reach Hi­laire, Ram­bar­ran, and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.