Dear Editor

Your recent editorial (Corporate culture alarming, Jan. 30) regarding the governance of the Tribal Councils Investment Group is flawed and the reliance on leaked and inaccurate allegations from disgruntled former directors and employees is quite concerning.

We are a private corporation owned by seven official shareholders who each appoint a duly authorized board representative to oversee the governance and management of the corporation as set out in our charter and that TCIG is coming off another year of business success and achievements.

TCIG operates under ISO 9001 corporate governance certification and has audited consolidated financial statements that are unqualified as well as reviewed and approved by the audit committee and the board of directors, before being presented to the shareholders of TCIG for approval, and this happens on an annual basis as required by law.

TCIG is being damaged and maligned in the media through the leaking of documents on the part of past directors and employees as well as from unsubstantiated comments from others who are not even official shareholders. These persons are clearly in breach of the confidentiality agreements that they signed while associated with the company and are obviously misinformed and disgruntled. This is very unfortunate.

Due to these inaccurate and unfounded allegations and breaches, we are now before the courts and while we are confident of our position, we cannot publicly share any supporting evidence with the media to balance the media coverage, for fear of prejudicing our case. We hope, however, to resolve and address all of these internal shareholder clarification matters without further public and media involvement at an upcoming TCIG shareholder meeting.

In closing, we ask that you please respect our status as a private company, our business track record, our certified corporate governance and the authority we have as the board. With this authority we fully support our president and CEO, Allan McLeod. We have full confidence in his leadership to continue to grow and diversify our businesses, which now employ more than 430 people and generate more than $100 million in annual revenues. He has been rewarded and recognized with multiple business awards again this year.

Frank Turner

Chairman of the board

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 5, 2013 A7