Last week, when the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial and HCU re­sumed, the sole com­mis­sion­er, Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, launched a fierce at­tack on a po­si­tion adopt­ed by the T&T Cen­tral Bank that cer­tain foren­sic re­ports that it had com­mis­sioned in­to Cli­co, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank and HCU should not be dis­closed to the en­quiry. Es­sen­tial­ly, the Cen­tral Bank has tak­en the po­si­tion that these foren­sic re­ports should not be dis­closed-or that there should be a pri­or agree­ment on redact­ed dis­clo­sure-be­cause to re­veal al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing at the com­mis­sion of en­quiry may dam­age the crim­i­nal and civ­il cas­es that the Cen­tral Bank in­tends to pur­sue. The po­si­tion adopt­ed by Sir An­tho­ny was that if the Cen­tral Bank were suc­cess­ful in pre­vent­ing dis­clo­sure of the foren­sic re­ports, an ex­ten­sive amount of in­ves­tiga­tive work, go­ing over some of the same ground that had pre­vi­ous­ly been cov­ered, would have to be un­der­tak­en at great cost and sig­nif­i­cant de­lay in the fi­nal pro­duc­tion of the re­port-both of which would be at the ex­pense of T&T tax­pay­ers."I have to say that the po­si­tion tak­en by the Cen­tral Bank is in my judg­ment se­ri­ous­ly po­ten­tial­ly im­ped­ing the work of the en­quiry," said Sir An­tho­ny, adding a lit­tle lat­er that the non-dis­clo­sure of the foren­sic re­ports by the Cen­tral Bank was "at least po­ten­tial­ly ad­verse to the speedy and ef­fi­cient com­ple­tion of the work of this en­quiry."

The sole com­mis­sion­er's charge that the Cen­tral Bank's po­si­tion-which it would have ar­rived at af­ter re­ceiv­ing and study­ing le­gal ad­vice-has the po­ten­tial to hin­der the work of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry is ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous. It sug­gests that the Cen­tral Bank is wil­ful­ly, and per­haps spu­ri­ous­ly, plac­ing the coun­try at greater ad­di­tion­al ex­pense and de­lib­er­ate­ly slow­ing down the work of the com­mis­sion. The eas­i­est way to de­ter­mine whether there is any va­lid­i­ty to Sir An­tho­ny's charge that the Cen­tral Bank was "po­ten­tial­ly im­ped­ing the work of the en­quiry" is by look­ing at the work that the com­mis­sion has been man­dat­ed to do.

As Sir An­tho­ny him­self point­ed out in an ear­li­er pro­ce­dur­al hear­ing, the work of the com­mis­sion can be di­vid­ed in­to two main ex­er­cis­es. The first as­pect of the com­mis­sion's work is the find­ing of the pri­ma­ry facts of the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial. This would in­volve an en­quiry in­to "the cir­cum­stances, fac­tors, caus­es and rea­sons" lead­ing to the Jan­u­ary 2009 in­ter­ven­tion by the Gov­ern­ment. It would al­so in­volve the "le­gal and fis­cal bases which in­formed the de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment" to bail out CL Fi­nan­cial and "the caus­es, rea­sons and cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the fi­nan­cial con­di­tions of CL Fi­nan­cial" which were re­spon­si­ble for threat­en­ing "the in­ter­est of de­pos­i­tors, in­vestors, pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cred­i­tors and share­hold­ers" of the group.

The sec­ond as­pect was to eval­u­ate the facts to de­ter­mine who was "at fault in re­la­tion to the caus­es of the cir­cum­stances in ques­tion," to de­ter­mine whether there are grounds for crim­i­nal and civ­il pro­ceed­ings, and to make rec­om­men­da­tions aimed at pre­vent­ing a re­cur­rence of the col­lapse. It might be ar­gued that the com­mis­sion can pro­ceed with the process of de­ter­min­ing why CL Fi­nan­cial col­lapsed with­out get­ting dis­tract­ed by the foren­sic au­dits, which will come in­to their own when the en­quiry reach­es the stage of de­ter­min­ing the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of the par­ties, both in­side and out­side the group. But, as the Cen­tral Bank has point­ed out, the foren­sic au­dits were com­mis­sioned with a view to es­tab­lish­ing the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of those who were in­volved in the CL Fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle. So the ques­tion be­comes: Which fo­rum is the bet­ter and more ap­pro­pri­ate for de­ter­min­ing who is to blame for the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial? Is it the com­mis­sion of en­quiry or the coun­try's law courts? If it is felt that the courts are a bet­ter fo­rum for as­crib­ing blame, hold­ing peo­ple to ac­count and en­sur­ing that pun­ish­ment fits the crime, then wouldn't it be fool­ish (or even crim­i­nal) to do any­thing that has even the po­ten­tial to jeop­ar­dise the even­tu­al suc­cess of the court cas­es?