A deepening governance crisis has emerged at Suriname’s Telecommunicatie Autoriteit Suriname (TAS), the nation’s top telecommunications regulator, after its supervisory body, the Raad van Commissarissen (RvC), formally requested a full independent audit of the authority’s financial operations from 2020 to 2025 and launched formal steps to suspend or remove the agency’s sitting director, Wendy Jap-A-Joe. The demands are outlined in an official dated June 15, addressed to Suriname President Jennifer Simons and Minister of Transport, Communication and Tourism Raymond Landveld.
The RvC justified its extraordinary request by citing persistent, severe concerns over corporate governance, financial stewardship and internal information sharing at TAS. According to the supervisory board, it has faced consistent and structural obstruction in carrying out its legally mandated oversight responsibilities. Specific grievances include prolonged delays in financial reporting, repeated failure to submit complete annual financial statements on schedule, lack of verifiable documentation for key expenditures and decisions, and repeated refusal by leadership to implement formal RvC resolutions. The board argues the situation has become severe enough to require immediate temporary suspension of Director Jap-A-Joe as a precautionary measure while the full investigation proceeds.
A central focus of the requested probe, which will be carried out by the Centrale Landsaccountantsdienst (CLAD), Suriname’s central state audit service, is compliance with legal requirements mandating that TAS remit any surplus funds to the national government. The RvC says no surplus remittances to the state have been recorded since 2022, even though available financial data shows TAS holds large amounts of liquid capital and fixed-term deposits. To date, the board has found no formal legal authorization allowing TAS to retain or invest these surplus funds instead of transferring them to state coffers.
Beyond the unremitted surplus, the RvC has called for scrutiny of TAS’s spending on sponsorship activities. The board notes that sponsorship falls outside TAS’s legally defined core mandate, so investigators will need to confirm whether these expenditures had a valid legal basis and were properly accounted for in official financial records.
Another area flagged for investigation is the deployment of TAS staff to the Office of the Vice President of Suriname between 2021 and 2025. The RvC claims TAS employees carried out work for the vice president’s office for multiple years, with all associated payroll and operational costs covered by the telecom regulator – an arrangement that has no basis in Suriname’s Telecommunications Act, according to the board.
The audit will also cover the legality and efficiency of TAS spending on international training programs, professional seminars, industry conferences and official overseas travel. Additional areas to be reviewed include all third-party contracts, active projects, bank holdings, fixed-term deposits, annual financial statements, and the completeness and accuracy of TAS’s overall financial administration. The RvC has stipulated that if the CLAD audit or a separate preliminary financial and operational review conducted by the board uncovers evidence of potential criminal activity or integrity violations, relevant law enforcement and oversight bodies must be notified immediately.
The supervisory board further notes that it had repeatedly requested Jap-A-Joe to provide required financial and governance documentation and cooperate with the preliminary review, but these requests received insufficient response. This lack of cooperation, the board says, has severely hampered its ability to carry out its statutory oversight duties.
In a direct response to the RvC’s allegations, Director Jap-A-Joe has pushed back against the board’s narrative, telling local outlet Starnieuws that she is deeply disappointed by the content of the formal request. She accused the RvC of misrepresenting facts in its letter, but declined to address the specific accusations in detail ahead of a scheduled meeting with President Simons on the following day. Jap-A-Joe noted that TAS has already sent multiple formal communications to the president, vice president and relevant minister, and will respond fully to the claims during the planned presidential meeting.
As of the publication of this report, neither President Simons nor Minister Landveld have issued any public comment on the RvC’s request. Under Suriname’s Telecommunications Act, the president holds the authority to appoint, suspend or remove the TAS director, acting on a recommendation from the relevant minister and following formal approval from the Council of Ministers.