High Court Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh yes­ter­day dis­missed an at­tempt by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to stay the pe­ti­tion to wind up the de­funct Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB). The rul­ing was made in a cham­ber court hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain. It ef­fec­tive­ly means the pe­ti­tion to wind up CIB will go ahead on Jan­u­ary 13, 2011.

It comes just two days af­ter the Court of Ap­peal ruled that Boodoos­ingh was wrong in his han­dling of the pe­ti­tion be­fore him. Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, lead­ing the pan­el of ap­pel­late judges Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo and Humphrey Stollmey­er, said Boodoos­ingh had erred by not al­low­ing NGC to be heard on the pro­ce­dure for the wind­ing up pe­ti­tion. Dr Claude Den­bow, SC, Dhar­men­dra Pun­wasee and Don­na Den­bow had ap­peared for NGC.

NGC had ob­ject­ed to the wind­ing-up pe­ti­tion and sought to stay the pro­ceed­ings un­til the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a law­suit be­fore an­oth­er judge. In that case, NGC is seek­ing to re­cov­er more than $1.1 bil­lion in­vest­ed with the CIB. In April, this year, Hi­ralal filed an ap­pli­ca­tion at the High Court to have the com­pa­ny wound up. He was ap­point­ed in­ter­im man­ag­er of the CIB by the Cen­tral Bank. In his af­fi­davit, he stat­ed the com­pa­ny was "de­funct."