Articles

Angostura execs’ wild spending exposed

Damn­ing claims of high-lev­el mis­man­age­ment, wild spend­ing and im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices made by low-lev­el em­ploy­ees, which showed a pat­tern of mis­be­hav­iour by top com­pa­ny of­fi­cials, sparked the in-depth au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of State-owned An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd.

The com­pa­ny, which has an as­set base of over $3 bil­lion, is one of the top per­form­ing sub­sidiaries of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire ac­quired by Gov­ern­ment af­ter CLF was un­able to pay its debt from the 2009 bailout of the com­pa­ny. Its shares were al­so used by the Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund in rais­ing $4 bil­lion to off-set the na­tion­al bud­get deficit.

The NIF bond is sup­port­ed by some of the strongest CLF com­pa­nies, with a col­lec­tive mar­ket val­ue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7.9 bil­lion, in­clud­ing shares of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed, West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, An­gos­tu­ra and Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed. The Gov­ern­ment said the ini­tial of­fer was over-sub­scribed and plans on sec­ond ven­ture next year.

Since news of the An­gos­tu­ra in­ves­ti­ga­tion broke, how­ev­er, peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions which in­vest­ed in the NIF re­main anx­ious about the out­come of the probe, ac­cord­ing to one big in­vestor. But there has been si­lence from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­istries on the mat­ter, al­though Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been on a re­cent cam­paign de­nounc­ing white-col­lar crime.

And in the face of the au­dit and the com­pa­ny be­ing in the me­dia spot­light, one An­gos­tu­ra di­rec­tor, Kir­by An­tho­ny Hosang, re­signed sud­den­ly last week. No rea­son was giv­en by chair­man Ter­rence Bharath, who faced the me­dia on Thurs­day and con­firmed the au­dit but gave lit­tle oth­er de­tails about the al­le­ga­tions raised in an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle last week.

An­gos­tu­ra con­firmed Hosang’s de­par­ture, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 31, in ad­ver­tise­ments in yes­ter­day’s news­pa­pers.

Copies of the bomb­shell com­plaint, filed by an anony­mous whistle­blow­er, have been made avail­able to Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly.

Ac­count­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, which is be­ing as­sist­ed by law firm Fitzwilliam Stone Fur­ness-Smith and Mor­gan, will meet with the com­pa­ny’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Genevieve Jod­han to­mor­row to give her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to trou­bling al­le­ga­tions over the award of mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts to MH Tac­ti­cal, a com­pa­ny with close ties to a serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cer, Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez, who has been de­scribed as “an as­set to the State and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has de­fend­ed Her­nan­dez, 42, a high­ly-trained op­er­a­tive who is as­signed to an elite unit—the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team—say­ing a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice had au­tho­rised the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer to be a con­sul­tant at a St Au­gus­tine-based com­pa­ny owned by Her­nan­dez’s wife.

How­ev­er, Her­nan­dez de­scribes him­self as the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and own­er of MH Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Group on his LinkedIn pro­file and is the face of the com­pa­ny on its Face­book page.

Her­nan­dez is one of the of­fi­cers who played a key role in res­cu­ing kid­nap vic­tim Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais from her ab­duc­tors in El So­cor­ro in Sep­tem­ber and has led a hand-picked team of po­lice and sol­diers in oth­er ma­jor an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions, ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty sources.

Jod­han, who has opt­ed to pro­ceed on 20 days va­ca­tion leave ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 29, has main­tained that her au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the con­tracts, val­ued at $2.2 mil­lion, to MH Tac­ti­cal and two sub­sidiaries—New Or­der Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices (NOSS) and Cor­po­rate As­set Man­age­ment (CAP) were above board. An­oth­er con­tract to Build­ing Spaces Ltd is al­so un­der re­view, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny of­fi­cials.

Sources close to Jod­han said she in­tends to de­fend her name to­mor­row and will in­stead point fin­gers at top com­pa­ny of­fi­cials as hav­ing an agen­da to re­move her from of­fice. She had ini­tial­ly been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave af­ter she re­turned from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty on study leave, but that de­ci­sion was re­tract­ed af­ter she agreed to go on va­ca­tion.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tion by for­mer judge of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son did not re­sult in any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

Com­plaint to mange­ment

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