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TSTT denies whistleblower claims

A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion has un­earthed a damn­ing whistle­blow­er re­port in­side the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) which de­tails spe­cif­ic ques­tion­able pro­cure­ment prac­tices and mega-mil­lion dol­lar deals with­out board ap­proval.

While the State com­pa­ny is deny­ing all the de­tails con­tained in the re­port, its au­thor, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Mo­bile, Nicole Ker­ry Lumkin, is stand­ing by her state­ments.

The Lumkin re­port, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, de­tails the spe­cial treat­ment grant­ed to two com­pa­nies owned by the same man.

News of the mis­man­aged fi­nances comes even as TSTT, cit­ing dire fi­nan­cial straits, let go over 500 em­ploy­ees last month to main­tain its vi­a­bil­i­ty. The re­ports show that the com­pa­ny may have mis­man­aged more than half a bil­lion dol­lars be­tween 2013 and 2018.

Guardian Me­dia made con­tact with TSTT’s Se­nior Man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Mar­sha Ca­ballero, last Thurs­day and was told that the com­pa­ny need­ed time to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. The com­pa­ny sent its re­sponse to ques­tions on the doc­u­ments late yes­ter­day. In that re­sponse, TSTT is deny­ing any fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and ac­cused this me­dia house of “tar­get­ing” its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Dr Ronald Wal­cott.

In the first week of the year, Guardian Me­dia re­ceived a pack­et of doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing two in­ter­nal au­dits, one by TSTT’s for­mer in­ter­nal au­dit man­ag­er Mait­land Daniels, an­oth­er by the com­pa­ny’s chief in­ter­nal au­di­tor Randy Mar­cano and an in­ter­nal re­port by Lumkin.

The Lumkin re­port con­tains sev­er­al ques­tions, in­clud­ing why two cell phone re­tail­ers were grant­ed spe­cial priv­i­leges with TSTT with­out board ap­proval even though the deals were a fi­nan­cial strain on the com­pa­ny. In one of the doc­u­ments, Lumkin ques­tioned the re­la­tion­ship be­tween TSTT, Cell­Mas­ter and Mi­zo­va. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the two re­tail­ers were paid a flat fee of $9 mil­lion and $10.5 mil­lion re­spec­tive­ly in­stead of a com­mis­sion on sales like all oth­er re­tail­ers.

Lumkin de­scribed the two con­tracts as “no­to­ri­ous­ly bad mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts” which were al­lowed to con­tin­ue in the ab­sence of board ap­proval and lim­it­ed re­turns for TSTT.

Both re­tail out­lets are owned and op­er­at­ed by Richard Smith, who is re­lat­ed to the for­mer sport min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith.

Lumkin, in her re­port, de­tailed the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of all TSTT re­tail­ers and found that while the av­er­age cost per trans­ac­tion with oth­er re­tail­ers ranged from $64 to $115, Cell­Mas­ter car­ried a $546.68 fee per trans­ac­tion and Mi­zo­va was paid a mas­sive $9,971.51 per trans­ac­tion. While oth­er re­tail­ers got a com­mis­sion rang­ing from three to 13 per cent, Cell­Mas­ter earned a 21 per cent ver­sus Mi­zo­va’s 16 per cent.

“TSTT sim­ply makes a huge loss at the Mi­zo­va stores of more than $9,000 per trans­ac­tion,” Lumkin not­ed in the re­port.

“To date, TSTT has spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50 mil­lion on these two con­tracts.”

She added that the on­ly “re­spon­si­ble” thing to do was to ter­mi­nate the two con­tracts. How­ev­er, that was nev­er done.

Un­der the ban­ner “im­por­tant facts,” Lumkin said that the orig­i­nal Cell­Mas­ter con­tract was val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $27 mil­lion be­tween 2011 and 2014. She claimed that the con­tract nev­er re­ceived board ap­proval.

“I have not been able to find the orig­i­nal busi­ness case or any oth­er ma­te­r­i­al that prop­er­ly jus­ti­fies this con­tract,” Lumkin said.

Lumkin said the “orig­i­nal Mi­zo­va con­tract was ap­proved via the CEO fi­nan­cial au­thor­i­ty lim­it and was val­ued at $3.5 mil­lion.” That con­tract ex­pired since Jan­u­ary 31, 2015.

“Again, this con­tract did not re­ceive board ap­proval, and I have not been able to find the orig­i­nal busi­ness case or any oth­er ma­te­r­i­al that prop­er­ly jus­ti­fies this con­tract,” Lumkin said in her re­port.

Aside from that pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, Lumkin al­so not­ed that be­fore Ronald Wal­cott be­came TSTT’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, “he di­rect­ly man­aged Cell­Mas­ter from 2011 to 2013 as Head of the Pre­paid and Chan­nel Man­age­ment De­part­ment.”

Lumkin pro­posed that both con­tracts be ter­mi­nat­ed and had the sup­port of the ex­ec­u­tives. How­ev­er, by Jan­u­ary 2016 the con­tract doc­u­ments for the two com­pa­nies were back on the ta­ble. She said she wrote to the ex­ec­u­tives but nev­er re­ceived a re­sponse. By Jan­u­ary 25, 2016, she was in­formed that the two con­tracts would con­tin­ue and would go for­ward for board ap­proval.

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Image:  Sarah Klockars-Clauser, Open Photo