Series Overview:
In this special investigative series of Vendor Influence and corruption, we examine the bold testimony of former CFO Shiva Ramnarine, at the Joint Select Committee of Parliament (JSC), who exposed deep-rooted corruption, vendor collusion, and boardroom conflicts of interest within Trinidad and Tobago’s national telecoms provider, TSTT. From sweetheart contracts to systemic failures in governance, Ramnarine’s revelations reveal not just financial mismanagement but a corporate culture hijacked by self-interest. This three-part exposé tracks the crisis, the complicit, and the call for sweeping reform.
Part 2: Boardroom Collusion and Conflict of Interest:
Shiva Ramnarine’s testimony at the JSC did more than expose profiteering vendors. It shone a light on startling conflicts of interest at the very top of TSTT. The “vendor mafia” was not limited to outside contractors; it seemingly extended into the boardroom itself. “Undermining occurred at the board level… on every front,” Shiva Ramnarine said, indicating that certain board members actively resisted cost-cutting and enabled the waste. He revealed that one TSTT board director even had a private company benefiting from TSTT contracts via opaque ‘emergency’ spending. In his words: “We have a member of the board of directors who has a company that was the successful recipient of contracts through emergency spending. That was stopped during my tenure.”. This bombshell drew gasps.
Though Ramnarine diplomatically refrained from naming names in the hearing, the identities behind this egregious setup have become an open secret, their identities widely recognized both within TSTT and beyond.. Ingrid Lashley, a former TSTT director, sat simultaneously as Chairman of Innovative Power Systems Ltd. (IPSL) – an electrical power supplier that counted TSTT among its clients. Serving alongside her at IPSL was fellow TSTT board member Nicole De Freitas, the company’s CEO and owner. Together, Lashley and De Freitas were effectively on both sides of the transaction: positioned to influence TSTT’s procurement decisions, while also running a firm that stood to gain from those decisions.
By exploiting “emergency” procurement loopholes, which allow expedited no-bid contracts in urgent situations, IPSL secured work from TSTT without a competitive tender, turning public service into a personal opportunity. It is a textbook conflict of interest and a flagrant breach of the Public Procurement laws designed to prevent exactly such self-dealing. Thanks to Shiva Ramnarine’s intervention, this cozy arrangement was cut off – “that was stopped during my tenure,” he noted pointedly – but the fact it ever existed underscores a total collapse of governance ethics. As one parliamentarian observed, these revelations “left the country with more questions than answers” about who was watching the watchers. How could TSTT’s board green-light millions in no-bid “emergency” contracts? The stench of impropriety was unmistakable.
Another case in point was Howard Dottin, former TSTT board director and a top executive at Trinre Insurance. Dottin’s conflict was laid bare in the handling of TSTT’s insurance portfolio. When Agostini Insurance Brokers, a company with which Dottin had close professional ties, lost its contract to insure TSTT, Dottin all but openly campaigned to have that decision reversed. By all appearances, Ramnarine explained at the JSC how Dottin lobbied from within for Agostini to regain the multi-million dollar insurance deal, even though a competitive process had already determined a different and much cheaper outcome. Parliamentarian Rishi Sookhai asked whether Dottin’s meddling was after the procurement legislation was enacted, to which both Ramnarine and Agard indicated a resounding “Yes”. This meddling, allegedly done on behalf of a firm in which Dottin had a vested interest (or at least longstanding affiliations through Trinre), epitomizes the divided loyalties plaguing TSTT’s leadership.
It raises the spectre of procurement legislation violations – Trinidad and Tobago’s procurement rules demand that officials recuse themselves from decisions where they have an interest and indeed forbid using one’s influence to steer contracts to friends or related parties. Yet here was a director seemingly leveraging his post to advocate for a preferred insurer after that insurer fairly lost the bid.
Such conduct betrays the public trust and may very well breach Sections of the procurement act regarding conflict of interest and improper influence. Ramnarine’s sound-bytes before the JSC, though couched in careful terms, plainly alluded to these ethical failures. He spoke of “nepotism” and insider machinations, of a board that inexplicably opposed cost savings and favored entrenched vendors. The portrait that emerged was not of a few bad actors, but of a systematic collapse of governance at TSTT. Directors tasked with guarding the company’s interest were guarding the interests of vendors, including their own ventures, turning the state telecom into a personal fiefdom for a handful of selected vendors. Little wonder that, as Ramnarine and Agard testified, they encountered “significant hostility” for challenging these sacred cows. By daring to uphold their fiduciary duty, they threatened to unravel a web of patronage reaching into TSTT’s highest echelons. In the fallout, both executives were fired, while those with conflicted agendas remained, a result that Shiva Ramnarine characterized as utterly perverse. The “vendor mafia,” it seems, had actors seated at TSTT’s own board table.