Former Central Bank governor to sue for wrongful dismissal

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire has sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to sue the State for wrong­ful dis­missal.

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia queries on his fu­ture yes­ter­day, he wrote, “To­day (yes­ter­day), my at­tor­neys at law is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the Cab­i­net (via the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary) con­cern­ing my wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion as Gov­er­nor. I am hope­ful that the mat­ter will be ex­pe­di­tious­ly set­tled.”

Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment was re­voked by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on June 24.

Gov­ern­ment has de­clined to give rea­sons for his ter­mi­na­tion. How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pub­licly stat­ed about three weeks be­fore he was fired, that Hi­laire was re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion about the top users of for­eign ex­change in the coun­try.

Lar­ry Howai, a for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, was ap­point­ed as the new Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank ef­fec­tive June 24.

Hi­laire was ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed gov­er­nor for a five-year term on De­cem­ber 23, 2015, fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment of his pre­de­ces­sor, Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

Hi­laire’s first term end­ed on De­cem­ber 22, 2020, and he was reap­point­ed for a three-year term ef­fec­tive De­cem­ber 23, 2020.

That reap­point­ment came af­ter an amend­ment was made to the Cen­tral Bank Act that al­lowed for a gov­er­nor’s term to be be­tween three and five years.

Hi­laire’s dis­missal draws par­al­lels to the 2015 ter­mi­na­tion of Ram­bar­ran, who was al­so sacked af­ter he raised con­cerns about the for­eign ex­change mar­ket.

Ram­bar­ran was award­ed $7.5 mil­lion in a wrong­ful dis­missal case against the State.