Cox challenges TSTT over ‘forced’ exit

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

For­mer act­ing CEO of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), Keino Cox, is chal­leng­ing the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to place him on “ad­min­is­tra­tive leave” and the “non-re­new­al” of his act­ing CEO po­si­tion.

On Ju­ly 31, Cox’s con­tract as TSTT’s act­ing CEO end­ed af­ter the com­pa­ny’s board re­viewed his per­for­mance.

Af­ter a year at the helm of state-owned TSTT, Cox, who has over 25 years of lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion and pub­lic sec­tor mod­erni­sa­tion, was re­placed by Reza Ho­sein.

Cox is con­test­ing the non-re­new­al of his act­ing CEO ap­point­ment in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 8, 2026, draft­ed by at­tor­ney Kristy Mo­han on the in­struc­tions of Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj.

The let­ter was ad­dressed to at­tor­ney Saman­tha Singh-Poona, who is act­ing on TSTT’s be­half.

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day re­gard­ing the let­ter, Ma­haraj said that Cox was in­deed forced out of TSTT.

“Oh yes! Yes, he was forced out. The case is based on the fact that he was not on­ly un­fair­ly treat­ed, he was al­so un­law­ful­ly treat­ed in pub­lic and pri­vate law.”

Asked if he has a strong case against TSTT, Ma­haraj re­spond­ed, “I have an unan­swer­able case.”

The Sep­tem­ber 8 let­ter was Mo­han’s sec­ond to Singh-Poona.

The first was on Au­gust 26, 2026, to which Singh-Poona re­spond­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2 on be­half of TSTT, ask­ing for more time.

“We find it com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able that, hav­ing tak­en the se­ri­ous de­ci­sion to place our Client on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and not re­new his ap­point­ment as act­ing CEO, your Client is un­able to dis­close the ba­sis for those de­ci­sions or re­spond to the mat­ter raised in our pre­vi­ous cor­re­spon­dence with­in the time al­lot­ted there­in,” Mo­han wrote in her Sep­tem­ber 8 let­ter to Singh-Poona.

Mo­han had ini­tial­ly re­quest­ed a re­sponse from TSTT with­in sev­en days.

How­ev­er, on the last day, TSTT asked for a fur­ther 14 days to re­spond.

Mo­han ob­ject­ed to the ex­ten­sion of time, stat­ing it was “plain­ly ex­ces­sive, in­or­di­nate in the cir­cum­stances of this mat­ter and can­not be jus­ti­fied.”

She fur­ther stat­ed there was no good rea­son why TSTT should re­quire a fur­ther 14 days sim­ply to iden­ti­fy and com­mu­ni­cate the ba­sis up­on which its own board act­ed.

Af­ter Cox’s de­par­ture, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said he was ad­vised by TSTT chair­man Kern Dass that the board met and, af­ter “care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and re­view,” de­cid­ed to ap­point Ho­sein to lead the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

Dur­ing Cox’s tenure, TSTT was in­voiced $436,081.78 for a three-day To­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive re­treat in­volv­ing him and ten oth­er ex­ec­u­tives from Jan­u­ary 16–18, 2026. The com­pa­ny de­fend­ed the re­treat and said the in­voice was over­stat­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 per cent.

As line min­is­ter for TSTT, Padarath said the board had shared with him the re­sults of an ap­praisal of Cox’s per­for­mance.

The min­is­ter al­so de­nied that Cox was es­cort­ed from TSTT’s premis­es by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

Cox’s de­par­ture came as TSTT was cel­e­brat­ing a ma­jor achieve­ment, a $214 mil­lion af­ter-tax prof­it on Ju­ly 26, the largest record­ed in 17 years.

In the let­ter, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Mo­han raised four is­sues re­lat­ed to the breach of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

“Our Client was of the view that this was a se­ri­ous breach of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, that the con­duct of the Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary was un­ac­cept­able and that ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion should be tak­en,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Mo­han men­tioned in her let­ter that her client re­mind­ed the board that this con­duct ex­ac­er­bat­ed the ex­ist­ing con­cerns about the Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary’s con­duct, as itemised in his mem­o­ran­dum is­sued on Au­gust 3, 2026, which raised, in­ter alia:

“Her fail­ure to prop­er­ly de­clare in the Code of Ethics De­c­la­ra­tion form, which she signed up­on com­mence­ment of her em­ploy­ment with TSTT, the de­tails of her sec­ondary em­ploy­ment at Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Sec­ond­ly, “a po­ten­tial ex­ist­ing con­flict of in­ter­est, as con­firmed by ex­ter­nal Se­nior Coun­sel’s le­gal ad­vice.”

Third­ly, “her de­lay in pro­gress­ing TSTT’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a Mon­ey Lender’s Li­cense, which ul­ti­mate­ly led to a ma­jor TSTT com­peti­tor, Dig­i­cel, ob­tain­ing a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in launch­ing a com­pet­ing prod­uct ahead of TSTT.”

Last­ly, “the in­ap­pro­pri­ate hir­ing of staff con­trary to TSTT’s pro­ce­dures and/or with­out CEO ap­proval.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that TSTT re­spond­ed to Mo­han’s let­ter on Thurs­day.

Be­yond the le­gal is­sues out­lined in the let­ter, ques­tions have been raised about TSTT bring­ing on board a “young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­ney, as a favour to a UNC politi­cian”.

The at­tor­ney was re­port­ed­ly hired with­out TSTT ad­ver­tis­ing the po­si­tion.

When con­tact­ed, Cox avoid­ed an­swer­ing the ques­tions but stat­ed that the mat­ter is in the hands of his le­gal team, led by Ma­haraj and Mo­han.

Ef­forts to get a re­sponse from Padarath were un­suc­cess­ful.