A former Bluesky manager claims SA Amper chairman Jaime Espinosa blocked the sale of employee trust shares, despite the request of some employees, including herself, to participate in the company’s success — the sale of Bluesky to Fiji-based Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH).

As a result, she has quit Bluesky unhappy with how the company’s corporate executives are handling a financial issue that affects them personally.

According to former Financial Manager Fala Sualevai, since January this year, five of the twelve managers at Bluesky American Samoa have resigned from the company, for a variety of reasons, with this particular issue being one of the reasons.

She told Samoa News that the managers who resigned, and others who are still employed in American Samoa and Samoa, have told company executives that they wish to sell shares they bought in an employee trust that was established two years ago to give managers an opportunity to participate in the company’s success.

Sualevai claims that Fiji-based Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH) agreed to purchase their shares along with the shares of other minority shareholders last year, when ATH also agreed to buy the controlling interest in Bluesky from Amper, a Spanish company.

Although ATH did buy shares from other minority shareholders, the employee trust shares were not purchased. Sualevai alleges that Amper Chairman Espinosa, in his position as the Trustee overseeing the employee shares in the Trust, would not facilitate the sale of trust shares to ATH.

Instead, the Trustee sought for members to forgo a gain on their investment by offering to refund the price they paid for their shares, even though that was far less than the price ATH paid other minority shareholders, and had agreed to pay for employee shares.

She further notes that Trust shareholders’ representatives, after numerous correspondence with the managers requesting the sale of their shares finally received a purchase offer from ATH that arbitrarily reduces the price of the shares to almost half the price paid that other shareholders received last year, and the price previously agreed to pay for employees shares, which Sualevai alleges was blocked by the Trustee.

Further, Sualevai says this offer conditions payment on the completion of the sale of Bluesky, which may take an unreasonable additional time as it depends on Regulatory approvals by the US Federal Communications Commission.

Representatives of the Trustee have recommended the Trustee to accept ATH’s recent offer.

The dispute has been ongoing since November 2016, when some of the managers asked the Trustee to facilitate their exit.

Samoa News has confirmed Sualevai’s claims with another former manager of Bluesky, who wishes to remain anonymous. Sualevai is currently an employee of American Samoa Tele Communications Authority.

In reply to Samoa News’ request from Bluesky management for a comment on Sualevai’s claims, a representative of Bluesky’s Trust Committee issued the following statement, yesterday evening.

“Any statement that a single person is ‘blocking’ the sale of trust shares is incorrect. 

“The Bluesky Management Trust is administered by a trustee subject to specific guidelines and subject to the support of a trust committee. The Trust is being managed in compliance with the terms of the Trust as well as the applicable laws and regulations.

“The trustee and the trust committee are committed to working with the trust members to ensure any share sales are effected [sic] in full compliance with the trust rules and all applicable laws.

“The trust committee is recommending the offer with a view to negotiating and reaching an amicable outcome for all involved, however, it is a sensitive commercial discussion and the publication of any details puts the whole discussion in jeopardy,” the statement concludes.

(Samoa News should point out that the Trust representative chose to respond as a “Trust representative” and did not give his or her name.)