Gail Alexan­der

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj will to­mor­row file ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against Gov­ern­ment to seek re­dress for the Cli­co Unit­ed Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group.Ma­haraj rep­re­sents Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um An­nu­ity (EF­PA) pol­i­cy­hold­ers.He not­ed yes­ter­day Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly passed a law to try to pre­vent de­pos­i­tors from ac­cess­ing the courts to re­cov­er the monies due from the Gov­ern­ment on their poli­cies.

Ma­haraj's ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion against the Cab­i­net would be filed on the grounds that the Gov­ern­ment act­ed un­law­ful­ly and con­trary to the prin­ci­ples of pub­lic law in re­fus­ing to ho­n­our the un­der­tak­ing giv­en by Gov­ern­ment for the pol­i­cy­hold­ers to get the pro­ceeds of their in­vest­ments.

The ap­pli­ca­tion al­so would con­tend that the pol­i­cy­hold­ers were be­ing treat­ed un­equal­ly by the Gov­ern­ment, con­trary to the pro­vi­sions of the na­tion's Con­sti­tu­tion. Ma­haraj said that law did not pre­vent the court from ex­er­cis­ing its spe­cial ju­ris­dic­tion in ju­di­cial re­views ap­pli­ca­tions against the Cab­i­net.

He said: "The Par­lia­ment does not have the pow­er to take away the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court in ju­di­cial re­view mat­ters."Gov­ern­ment would have to face the scruti­ny of the courts in re­spect of its un­law­ful ac­tion. "Gov­ern­ment had a du­ty to en­sure that the statu­to­ry fund of Cli­co and CL Fi­nan­cial were in place... pol­i­cy­hold­ers de­pend­ed on gov­ern­ments to guard their in­ter­est and en­force the laws against in­sur­ance com­pa­nies."

Ma­haraj al­so said Cli­co de­pos­i­tors, with over $75,000 in in­vest­ments, would have waived their rights to re­cov­er the full sums of monies due to them on their in­vest­ments if they ac­cept­ed Gov­ern­ment's ad­ver­tised of­fer.Un­der its new plan, Gov­ern­ment has said pol­i­cy­hold­ers for the first ten years would get a yield of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 cents for every dol­lar of their in­vest­ment if they chose to cash in their in­vest­ment with­in six months.

For years 11 to 20, the in­vestors have been promised a re­turn of 100 cents on the dol­lar, if they opt to swap these ze­ro-coupon bonds for units in the in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny that has been called NEL II.Ma­haraj said he wrote Gov­ern­ment seek­ing in­for­ma­tion to sup­port the con­tention but it had not sup­plied that in­for­ma­tion.Ma­haraj said that based on in­for­ma­tion giv­en by fi­nan­cial ex­perts he had in­for­ma­tion that the yield on the dol­lar was nowhere in the vicin­i­ty of 92 cents or an eight-cent dis­count.

"The yield is about 59 cents or less," Ma­haraj added.Ma­haraj would ad­dress EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers on Sun­day to sum­marise the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion.