It’s been eight months since Angélique Parisot-Pot­ter, Massy’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness in­tegri­ty and group gen­er­al coun­sel, shocked the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try, by mak­ing her con­cerns about the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pro­gramme pub­lic.

Parisot-Pot­ter claimed the con­glom­er­ate’s lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, Flori­da-based Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing, en­gaged in bizarre rit­u­als for ex­ec­u­tives, that their lead­er­ship pro­gramme is a drain of scarce for­eign ex­change and the cou­ple lead­ing the pro­gramme ap­pear to ex­ert dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence over Massy’s ex­ec­u­tive team.

Her claims were cre­ative­ly in­ter­pret­ed by the pub­lic which led to pub­lic mock­ery of Massy on so­cial me­dia.

Sub­se­quent­ly, the com­pa­ny’s share price dipped, a slew of ex­ec­u­tives left over the past four months and chair­man Robert Ri­ley sought to make gov­er­nance changes in the con­glom­er­ate.

But what is Del­phi’s deal?

The com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pals—Paul Dominguez and In­di­ra Dyal-Dominguez tell their sto­ry of what un­fold­ed fol­low­ing the scan­dal in this ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Thrust in­to the na­tion­al spot­light for work pri­mar­i­ly con­duct­ed in pri­vate, Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing’s ini­tial re­ac­tion was to stay silent. It was their client’s is­sue, af­ter all.

Massy’s lead­er­ship pro­gramme, for which they were em­ployed at the pub­licly trad­ed re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate for the last ten years through for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Ger­vase Warn­er, was be­ing pub­licly scru­ti­nized and in many in­stances, mocked.

It raised ques­tions. But an­swers were not im­me­di­ate­ly forth­com­ing.

Un­til now.

“Do you talk to the dead?”

The an­swer is not so straight­for­ward.

And to date, no one has ad­dressed that par­tic­u­lar claim, not even Warn­er.

“No,” was the im­me­di­ate re­sponse from Dominguez and his wife In­di­ra in an in­ter­view last week but the “no” comes with a “but” be­cause it had to be con­tex­tu­alised Dominguez said. For con­text, it was the fourth phase of a year-long train­ing ex­er­cise which fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing the “in­tu­itive” in the in­di­vid­ual.

“There’s no con­text for speak­ing to the dead. When you deal with en­er­gy, what starts to be­come very re­al for peo­ple in the pro­gramme is that, yes, we have a mind, but there’s an en­er­gy of who we are. Ein­stein proved that when he said you can’t cre­ate en­er­gy or de­stroy it. Well, then what hap­pens? You tap in­to that. You start to take it on and it be­comes re­al, you have a dif­fer­ent re­la­tion­ship with life,” said In­di­ra.

They ex­plained that what they were try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate was how to con­nect to the en­er­gy that ex­ists all around. And some­times, that comes in the spir­it of a loved one.

The cou­ple said it’s an ex­er­cise which lasts a few min­utes in their pro­gramme.

Their teach­ing, they said, fo­cus­es on har­ness­ing the in­di­vid­ual’s strengths, go­ing deep­er in­to per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions, train­ing the mind and nur­tur­ing an in­di­vid­ual’s in­tu­ition in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

They de­scribed the “bizarre rit­u­als” as med­i­ta­tions.

As for the “dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence”, they said part of their train­ing in­clud­ed week­ly calls with Massy ex­ec­u­tives. How­ev­er, they in­sist­ed they don’t dis­cuss com­pa­ny busi­ness but fo­cus on help­ing in­di­vid­u­als re­spond.

At its peak, Del­phi trained most Massy ex­ec­u­tives in an or­gan­i­sa­tion that em­ploys more than 12,000 peo­ple in near­ly 60 com­pa­nies across the re­gion and is list­ed on two re­gion­al stock ex­changes.

In their view, the Massy lead­er­ship is a suc­cess­ful ex­am­ple of their lead­er­ship pro­gramme in ac­tion.

Massy halt­ed the Del­phi pro­gramme fol­low­ing Parisot-Pot­ter’s al­le­ga­tions in Jan­u­ary.

In her 13-page let­ter, Parisot-Pot­ter made ad­di­tion­al al­le­ga­tions against Del­phi, say­ing that dur­ing train­ing they claimed to con­trol the weath­er and cure can­cer.

Parisot-Pot­ter said she be­lieved it was the prin­ci­ples of Del­phi and oth­er se­nior man­age­ment who raised is­sues about her role in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“Ger­vase cit­ed pre­vi­ous at­tempts at ‘coach­ing’ and ‘train­ing’ as un­suc­cess­ful means to shape me in­to the in­di­vid­ual he en­vi­sioned for the role; that it hadn’t worked and that ‘it’ had to end. And that the ‘how’ of how I wrote things even af­ter things had been ‘de­cid­ed’ and ‘agreed’ was the prob­lem,” she said, adding that she was sub­ject­ed to ver­bal abuse from the Del­phi con­sul­tant.

“Rather than ad­dress­ing the ev­i­dent mis­con­duct, Ger­vase shift­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to me to rec­on­cile with Paul and told me to even lever­age the in­ci­dent for in­tro­spec­tion. Such con­duct is un­equiv­o­cal­ly un­ac­cept­able, with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and un­war­rant­ed un­der any cir­cum­stances.”

Parisot-Pot­ter’s claim that she was ver­bal­ly abused by Dominguez was borne out in Massy’s three-month in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Ker­wyn Gar­cia SC.

Gar­cia said that Parisot-Pot­ter was “ver­bal­ly abused” by Dominguez dur­ing the first con­fer­ence of the pro­gramme in 2022 and that she “jus­ti­fi­ably felt hu­mil­i­at­ed by such abuse.”

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on Jan­u­ary 7 with Guardian Me­dia, Parisot-Pot­ter said she did the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship train­ing in 2022 and con­clud­ed in 2023.

“I was told by the CEO (Warn­er) that, quote-un­quote, I could not move for­ward with Massy un­less I did Del­phi,” she said.

Parisot-Pot­ter is a Catholic and be­lieves in God. How­ev­er, that be­lief sys­tem did not con­strain her from ac­cept­ing the Del­phi guid­ance which she said fo­cused on en­er­gy train­ing. Her is­sue, she told Guardian Me­dia on Jan­u­ary 7, was the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the cou­ple run­ning the pro­gramme and what she de­scribed as their “mum­bo-jum­bo” lan­guage of learn­ing.

“I had to do the pro­gramme. I did not have a choice. I was clear­ly and re­peat­ed­ly told that it was a con­di­tion for con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ty for se­nior mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team I can­not move for­ward with Massy with­out do­ing this pro­gramme.

“The Del­phi ex­pe­ri­ence was and is a se­ri­ous mat­ter in its vi­o­la­tions of my re­li­gious be­liefs and the be­liefs of oth­ers, but Del­phi in it­self was not the prob­lem. Del­phi is symp­to­matic of the re­al is­sues,” she had said.

Del­phi’s dilem­ma

Dominguez said they were first alert­ed to the al­le­ga­tions when they got calls from the me­dia.

“Massy did not reach out to us. There were peo­ple, our friends, who sent us the ar­ti­cles,” In­di­ra said.

Why did you stay qui­et?

“Massy was in the mid­dle of this thing. And they were the high­light of it. And out of re­spect for all the ex­ec­u­tives that we’ve spo­ken with and talked to and done the pro­gramme with, we agreed that we would wait and let them fin­ish their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” said Dominguez.

“You’ve got this big ‘talk­ing to the dead’ and ‘white light’ in all of Trinidad and you can’t say any­thing in­to that be­cause no one is lis­ten­ing to any­thing. Every­body is high­ly re­ac­tive,” he added.

Del­phi’s ses­sion was record­ed by Parisot-Pot­ter and sub­mit­ted to the Massy board along with a 13-page let­ter which out­lined al­le­ga­tions against Massy.

For Del­phi, it breached their con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

In the past few months, Parisot-Pot­ter has post­ed the record­ings on sev­er­al so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

In seek­ing re­lief, Del­phi has com­plained about their copy­right and had the ma­te­r­i­al tak­en down in some in­stances. They are al­so pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion against Parisot-Pot­ter.

In re­sponse, Parisot-Pot­ter told the Sun­day Guardian that “my Face­book ac­count was in­ex­plic­a­bly delet­ed a few months ago for copy­right claims I pre­sume were made by Del­phi.”

In their view, they were col­lat­er­al dam­age in Parisot-Pot­ter’s charges against Massy.

“I’m un­clear about the al­le­ga­tions of an agen­da or col­lat­er­al dam­age. Per­haps Del­phi does not un­der­stand share­hold­ers’ rights in this ju­ris­dic­tion” Parisot-Pot­ter re­spond­ed.

The cou­ple said they spent hours be­ing in­ter­viewed by in­ves­ti­ga­tor Ker­wyn Gar­cia SC.

In his re­port, Gar­cia said that “the ev­i­dence does not es­tab­lish that Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter was pe­nalised for ful­fill­ing her role as Gen­er­al Coun­sel or for not sup­port­ing or for re­ject­ing the Del­phi pro­gramme or its pre­sen­ters and that the ev­i­dence does not es­tab­lish that the Del­phi pro­gramme, whether by its con­tents of by its pre­sen­ters, pos­es any dan­ger to the op­er­a­tions of Massy.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that Massy ex­ec­u­tives are free to se­lect ex­ec­u­tive train­ing of their choice.

“Some Massy ex­ec­u­tives have felt the pro­gramme to be im­mense­ly help­ful. Oth­ers, in­clud­ing Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter, have not,” the re­port said.

Dominguez said there was one find­ing he dis­agreed with (his ver­bal abuse of Parisot-Pot­ter), but the find­ings “found us vin­di­cat­ed.”

The cou­ple opt­ed to speak now be­cause of the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age which has af­fect­ed their busi­ness.

“The dam­age is so huge. It is such a defama­tion and a vi­o­la­tion of who we are,” he said.

“It’s killed off about 80 per cent of our busi­ness which is sig­nif­i­cant. In fact, there was an en­gage­ment that was sup­posed to start in Ju­ly. That’s been post­poned. Right now, the on­ly work we’re do­ing is up here in the States un­til we get some­thing re­paired down there,” said Dominguez.

But In­di­ra holds a dif­fer­ent view.

“There’s no re­pair­ing or any­thing, what oc­curred is what oc­curred. We want to re­al­ly es­tab­lish who we are, be­cause of the lev­el of vi­o­la­tion of what has been said and the on­go­ing dis­tor­tion of our work for me, it’s re­al­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly speak who we are. I’m just about re­al­ly set­ting the record clear,” she said.

“We’ll take it to what­ev­er de­gree we need un­til we can get this si­lenced.”

On whether they feel their pro­gramme has been de­val­ued in the process, In­di­ra re­spond­ed: “Ab­solute­ly not. I am not de­val­ued. I know who I am. I know what I’m about. I think there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly el­e­vate how peo­ple think and see life. I don’t feel it has de­val­ued me and my work.

Con­tin­ues on page 6

I con­tin­ue to do what I’m do­ing. I’m bring­ing this out to the mass­es on a glob­al lev­el. And that’s my work. That’s who I am.”

They be­lieve by set­ting the record straight, that peo­ple will ac­cept their work in the Caribbean.

Do you be­lieve it’s enough?

“I trust en­er­gy. And I know, you see if you put some­thing out there, that is truth, I be­lieve it vi­brates much loud­er than the low­er vi­bra­tion space. I think that this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to el­e­vate the en­er­gy in which peo­ple are,” they said.

Back­ground

In April, af­ter a three-month probe, Massy said that the “over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty” of al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the 13-page doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Parisot-Pot­ter “have not been made out.”

Parisot-Pot­ter did not par­tic­i­pate in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause she re­fused to sign a re­quest­ed non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment (NDA).

Massy said it would al­so re­view its com­pa­ny’s gov­er­nance sys­tems, in par­tic­u­lar the bonus sys­tem for its ex­ec­u­tives.

The re­port re­vealed that Massy was re­struc­tur­ing its op­er­a­tions and that Parisot-Pot­ter’s job as group coun­sel was made re­dun­dant last year. As a re­sult, she was in ne­go­ti­a­tions to ex­it the com­pa­ny for $100 mil­lion as well as a seat on Massy’s board.

It said that in 2019, Massy de­cid­ed to re-or­gan­ise its op­er­a­tions in ac­cor­dance with the Port­fo­lio Mod­el which re­sult­ed in “ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences” be­tween Parisot-Pot­ter and the com­pa­ny.

“Those dif­fer­ences were a ma­jor fac­tor in the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship be­tween Massy and Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter. Fol­low­ing the emer­gence of those dif­fer­ences, Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter vol­un­tar­i­ly en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions on the terms of a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age for her vol­un­tary ex­it from the com­pa­ny. The par­ties agreed to en­ter me­di­a­tion on the terms of a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age,” the sum­ma­ry said.

“Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter’s state­ment was sub­mit­ted to fa­cil­i­tate con­sid­er­a­tion of that pro­pos­al,” it said.

The ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry said that Parisot-Pot­ter’s let­ter to Massy Hold­ings was made on No­vem­ber 12, 2023.

Gar­cia’s state­ment said that ne­go­ti­a­tions broke down on No­vem­ber 30, 2023, and that her al­le­ga­tions were made (pub­lic) there­after.

On De­cem­ber 18, 2023, at the com­pa­ny’s 100th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, Parisot-Pot­ter took to the floor dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer pe­ri­od and made pub­lic her con­cerns about the con­glom­er­ate’s ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, Del­phi.

She told the com­pa­ny’s board of di­rec­tors, chaired by Robert Ri­ley, that she had writ­ten to for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Ger­vase Warn­er but re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the mat­ter so she was com­pelled to raise the mat­ter at the AGM.

Two months af­ter her claims, on Feb­ru­ary 8, in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, Massy an­nounced that Warn­er would pro­ceed on ear­ly re­tire­ment on his 59th birth­day on April 6, 2024.

He was suc­ceed­ed by David Af­fon­so, who is the same age and is due to re­tire next year.

On March 8, Massy’s vice pres­i­dent of glob­al ex­pan­sion, David O’Brien, an­nounced that he would leave the com­pa­ny on June 8.