Yvonne Ba­boolal

For­mer chair­man of CL Fi­nan­cial Lawrence Duprey may not be sum­moned to tes­ti­fy at the Cli­co/HCU Com­mis­sion of En­quiry be­cause he vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­mit­ted a wit­ness state­ment, a com­mis­sion source said. Duprey is one of the key wit­ness­es in the en­quiry, which seeks to un­cov­er what led to the col­lapse of CL?Fi­nan­cial. He did not sub­mit a wit­ness state­ment, de­spite re­quests by the com­mis­sion, un­til last Mon­day. He was giv­en un­til Oc­to­ber 8 to sub­mit the state­ment, then a two-week ex­ten­sion.

Duprey, 74, has giv­en no in­di­ca­tion whether he will ap­pear in per­son at the en­quiry ei­ther. There were re­ports that his health was not at its best and he might not at­tend. He lives in Flori­da, USA. His at­tor­ney An­drew Mitchell, QC, had ear­li­er told the com­mis­sion Duprey had had dif­fi­cul­ty in re­spond­ing im­me­di­ate­ly to ev­i­dence that came out at the en­quiry be­cause of prob­lems he had in tak­ing in­struc­tions from Duprey, who is out of the coun­try.

Asked if the com­mis­sion could sum­mon him, a source said, "No, he vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­mit­ted a wit­ness state­ment." An­oth­er at­tor­ney felt the com­mis­sion still had the pow­er to do so, if it wished. Nyree Al­fon­so, a civ­il lawyer, said based on the laws, all com­mis­sions of en­quiry can sum­mon wit­ness­es to ap­pear be­fore them and to pro­duce in­for­ma­tion in the form of books, plans and doc­u­ments.

"Yes, the com­mis­sion can sum­mon wit­ness­es. There is pow­er there. If they don't turn up, they can be brought to court for con­tempt and im­pris­oned. A com­mis­sion of en­quiry has all the pow­ers of a court." Al­fon­so was un­sure, how­ev­er, how the law worked with a Trinida­di­an who lived abroad, as in the case of Duprey.

"I don't know whether the com­mis­sion has the pow­er to en­force his re­turn from the US to Trinidad. In the case of a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion, a per­son can be ex­tra­dit­ed, but you can't ex­tra­dite a wit­ness." Asked why she felt Duprey may not ap­pear, Al­fon­so said, "He may have re­ceived le­gal ad­vice that he was not oblig­ed to, that he has the right to re­main silent.

"There is lit­i­ga­tion in­volved right now and there may be fu­ture lit­i­ga­tion. "There is the mat­ter of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers' lit­i­ga­tion, and the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing the Gov­ern­ment signed with Cli­co comes to an end in?Sep­tem­ber, which will al­low Duprey to walk back in and take back the com­pa­ny, dry so. Peo­ple may de­cide on lit­i­ga­tion."

An­oth­er at­tor­ney, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said while Duprey sub­mit­ted a wit­ness state­ment, he could still be sum­moned. "There may be things the com­mis­sion wish­es to ask him that may not be in his state­ment," she said. Duprey, in a news­pa­per in­ter­view re­cent­ly, was re­port­ed as say­ing his health was nor­mal and made no com­ments on re­ports that he was spot­ted din­ing at a lo­cal restau­rant with for­mer CLF ex­ec­u­tive Car­los John.

He said he was in T&T "some time ago." Com­mis­sion chair­man Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, in an ear­li­er news­pa­per in­ter­view, said some wit­ness­es who were re­quired to ap­pear at the en­quiry seemed to have stayed out of the coun­try in or­der to avoid be­ing served sum­mons­es.

He said a to­tal of 13 sum­mons­es had been is­sued, but the en­quiry had not been able to serve some of them. Col­man said al­though there were no overt re­fusals, some peo­ple who had been sum­moned to ap­pear have kept out of the ju­ris­dic­tion and so they could not be sub­poe­naed.