CaribWorldNews, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. Nov. 18, 2009: The oil rich nation of Trinidad & Tobago is the lone Caribbean country to make the 2009 Corruption report.
The Global Corruption Report 2009: Corruption and the Private Sector, released Tuesday, November 17, 2009 ranked T&T 72nd out of 180 on the most corrupt scale for the past year.
The analysis by the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute stated there is `growing concern that … overlapping directorships leave state resources and private shareholder equity vulnerable to allegations of manipulation and insider dealings.`
The report points to the March 2007 case of the Stone Street Capital company, which paid TT$110 million (US$17.8 million) for over 40 per cent of the shares of Home Mortgage Bank (HMB), which is partly owned by the state. At the time of the purchase, Stone Street Capital co-owner André Monteil was chairman of both HMB and the privately owned Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) Investment Bank, which sold the HMB shares to Stone Street Capital.
`Whereas even a few years earlier the purchase might not have been legal, legislative changes in 2005 and 2007 paved the way for the sales,` said the report.
The TTTI insists that if overlapping directorships continue to be a facet of Trinidad and Tobago`s public and private enterprises, the door remains open for conflicts of interest to tempt those in positions of power to abuse their status for personal gain.
And it recommended that the current regulatory framework be reformed to require enterprises with overlapping directorships to exercise much higher standards of transparency and accountability.
Overall, the latest report documents many cases of managers, majority shareholders and other actors inside corporations who abuse their entrusted power for personal gain, to the detriment of owners, investors, employees and society at large in around 180 countries globally. In developing and transition countries alone, the report`s authors said companies collude with corrupt politicians and government officials, and have supplied bribes estimated at up to US$40 billion annually.
Transparency International`s Global Corruption Report 2009: Corruption and the Private Sector features more than 75 experts examining the scale, scope and devastating consequences of corporate corruption. The GCR is a flagship yearly publication from TI that compiles expert research and analysis from around the world with a thematic focus related to corruption.
