An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Four days af­ter a Massy Hold­ings ex­ec­u­tive de­liv­ered a con­tro­ver­sial state­ment at the group’s 100th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the spend­ing of hard-earned US dol­lars must be care­ful­ly pri­ori­tised.

Asked yes­ter­day if he had views on the is­sues raised by Massy ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Busi­ness In­tegri­ty, An­gelique Parisot-Pot­ter, at the group’s AGM on Mon­day, and the re­spons­es of the group’s CEO, Ger­vase Warn­er, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said, “US dol­lars are very hard to come by and not on­ly must be earned but, once earned, must be high­ly and care­ful­ly pri­ori­tised be­fore vis­it­ing mod­ern-day, self-pro­claimed or­a­cles.”

The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments on the need for pri­or­i­ties in the spend­ing of for­eign ex­change came in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia queries on the is­sue, af­ter he re­ferred to Del­phi in the spir­it of some of the pub­lic com­ments on the is­sue.

“My house in To­ba­go is very close to Adel­phi, so I too may con­sid­er con­sult­ing the Or­a­cle at Del­phi,” he said.

“Long ago, it was com­mon and ex­pect­ed that rulers would go to, and con­sult with, the Or­a­cle of Del­phi be­fore a bat­tle, or ma­jor de­ci­sion, in or­der to be ad­vised on what the fu­ture holds for the out­come.

“Our lan­guage is Ro­man, our po­lit­i­cal sys­tem is Greek, so we can’t dis­own the her­itage, if that is what it is.”

He added, “The re­al is­sue is in what cur­ren­cy do we pay. US dol­lars are very hard to come by and not on­ly must be earned but once earned must be high­ly and care­ful­ly pri­ori­tised be­fore vis­it­ing mod­ern day self-pro­claimed or­a­cles.”

Speak­ing on Mon­day at the AGM, Parisot-Pot­ter, who is al­so the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said she was oblig­ed to speak up about sig­nif­i­cant gov­er­nance and fidu­cia­ry con­cerns she de­tailed in a 13-page doc­u­ment, in­clud­ing au­dio ev­i­dence, which was shared with Warn­er.

Those con­cerns cen­tred around a “so-called ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pro­gramme” pre­sent­ed by a com­pa­ny called Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing, based in Fort My­ers, Flori­da, USA, which Parisot-Pot­ter said had been in­volved with Massy for over a decade.

“This pro­gramme in­volves fre­quent trav­el to Fort My­ers, Flori­da, and week­ly com­mit­ments for over a year at a cost per par­tic­i­pant of tens of thou­sands of US dol­lars, for which there were over 11 par­tic­i­pants last year alone,” she said.

Lament­ing the dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence that the cou­ple run­ning Del­phi ap­pear to ex­ert over Massy’s ex­ec­u­tive team, Parisot-Pot­ter said, “In the midst of a for­eign ex­change cri­sis, Massy can­not be spend­ing scarce re­sources on high­ly du­bi­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, and con­tracts award­ed can­not be pushed through with­out pru­dent due process.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view on Mon­day, fol­low­ing the AGM, Warn­er said Massy spent be­tween US$500,000 and US$1 mil­lion a year on the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship train­ing in Fort My­ers, Flori­da.

Asked whether it would be pos­si­ble to fly the man­age­ment train­ers to T&T, Warn­er said that has hap­pened as well.

“Fly­ing four or five peo­ple to Fort My­ers for four days, four times in a year, is not go­ing to af­fect the bot­tom line of the Massy Group of Com­pa­nies. But it will make a huge dif­fer­ence in who those lead­ers turn out to be for the Massy Group, out of their ex­pe­ri­ences.”

In a clar­i­fi­ca­tion de­liv­ered through a pub­lic re­la­tions con­sul­tant last night, Warn­er said, “The max­i­mum Massy spent on the train­ing pro­gramme in ques­tion was US$480,000 over 15 months.”

Ques­tioned on Mon­day about Massy’s ex­pen­di­ture of for­eign ex­change on the lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gramme, which could in­stead go to oth­er busi­ness­es, Warn­er said Massy spends mil­lions up­on mil­lions of dol­lars in for­eign ex­change on an an­nu­al ba­sis.

“This is a drop in the buck­et. Part of why we are able to raise for­eign ex­change in this coun­try is through the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es. And there is a di­rect link­age to the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es and the in­vest­ment in these train­ing pro­grammes,” Warn­er said, not­ing the Del­phi train­ing pro­gramme that formed the ba­sis of Parisot-Pot­ter’s com­plaint played a role in the com­pa­ny’ suc­cess.

Massy sent Parisot-Pot­ter on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave on Wednes­day un­til Jan­u­ary 12, 2024.