Re­gion­al cred­it rat­ing agency Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­CRIS) has ex­pressed con­cern about East­ern Cred­it Union’s (ECU) fu­ture “sta­bil­i­ty and fi­nan­cial per­for­mance.”

Cari­CRIS made the state­ment in a re­lease yes­ter­day, as it out­lined that ECU has been un­co­op­er­a­tive in pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for it to com­plete its sur­veil­lance re­port.

As such, ECU has been placed on Rat­ing Watch – De­vel­op­ing.

“This Rat­ing Ac­tion was tak­en as a re­sult of ECU’s lack of co­op­er­a­tion with pro­vid­ing us key in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the com­ple­tion of our an­nu­al rat­ing sur­veil­lance re­port for the 2021/22 pe­ri­od, de­spite our sev­er­al at­tempts to ob­tain same,” Cari­CRIS stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Cari­CRIS, based on re­cent me­dia re­leas­es, it had not­ed that there may be po­ten­tial le­gal mat­ters with ECU ex­ec­u­tives on­go­ing, as well as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to its op­er­a­tions by the Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tives.

“We are con­cerned that these de­vel­op­ments could ad­verse­ly im­pact the cred­it union’s sta­bil­i­ty and fi­nan­cial per­for­mance go­ing for­ward,” Cari­CRIS stat­ed.

Cari­CRIS said it will con­tin­ue to li­aise with ECU’s per­son­nel over the com­ing weeks to ob­tain the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion and de­ter­mine the im­pact of re­cent events on ECU’s cred­it­wor­thi­ness and ad­just its rat­ings ac­cord­ing­ly.

The rat­ing agency said ECU is cur­rent­ly rat­ed CariBB+ (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy Rat­ings) on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale and ttBB+ on the Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) na­tion­al scale, with a sta­ble out­look as­signed.

A Cari­CRIS rat­ing is placed on Rat­ing Watch - De­vel­op­ing when events oc­cur that may af­fect the cred­it qual­i­ty of the is­suer/is­sue, the im­pact of which can­not be ac­cu­rate­ly as­sessed at that point in time. Cari­CRIS said a rat­ing placed un­der Rat­ing Watch does not im­ply that the rat­ing will nec­es­sar­i­ly change.

On May 7, a Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive head­lined “Con­fu­sion at East­ern Cred­it Union” high­light­ed sev­er­al is­sues af­fect­ing the in­sti­tu­tion.

Since Richard No­ray was elect­ed ECU pres­i­dent in March 2021, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and one of its di­rec­tors were dis­missed, and two oth­er di­rec­tors were sus­pend­ed from the board.

And dur­ing that time, the body tasked with su­per­vis­ing cred­it unions al­so launched an en­quiry and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to ECU’s op­er­a­tions.

The 2019 An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, which com­menced on De­cem­ber 5, 2020, was re­con­vened and con­clud­ed on March 27, 2021.

The 2020 AGM was held some eight months lat­er in No­vem­ber 2021 and No­ray was re-elect­ed to the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent.

No­ray, how­ev­er, has de­fend­ed his ac­tions since his ap­point­ment and blamed mis­chief mak­ers for the state of af­fairs.

In June, High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad said a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of ECU’s “prac­tices, poli­cies and modus operan­di” may be need­ed, as he hand­ed down the judge­ment in a li­bel and slan­der mat­ter be­tween ECU’s for­mer di­rec­tor Har­vey Bor­ris and the cred­it union’s for­mer pres­i­dent Wayne Estra­da. Bor­ris’ claims were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed.

Lat­er that month, Seep­ere­sad stat­ed that “ev­i­dent­ly, all is not well at ECU,” as he de­liv­ered judge­ment in a law­suit brought by Ger­ard Matthews, a sus­pend­ed ECU di­rec­tor, chal­leng­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the cred­it union’s elec­tion held in No­vem­ber.

Al­so in June, ECU re­moved it­self from the re­mit of the Cen­tral Bank, days af­ter mem­bers of its board held a press con­fer­ence where ac­cu­sa­tions were made con­cern­ing a reg­u­la­tor col­lud­ing with a dis­grun­tled for­mer board mem­ber to de­stroy the or­gan­i­sa­tion.