Con­tin­u­ing from last week's cri­tique of the re­vised bailout and its im­pli­ca­tions, I have fur­ther con­cerns as to the process by which the leg­is­la­tion was passed.I am aware that the Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) were giv­en a brief­ing on this mat­ter, so that they would be bet­ter in­formed on this com­plex mat­ter. That brief­ing was con­duct­ed per­son­al­ly by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, to­geth­er with their ad­vis­ers and cer­tain Cli­co of­fi­cials.

The brief­ing pro­vid­ed back­ground in­for­ma­tion on these ar­eas:

• The sta­tus of the var­i­ous out­stand­ing au­dit­ed ac­counts;

• A pro­file of the monies owed in terms of amounts owed to cer­tain class­es of pol­i­cy­hold­ers. I am told that quite a small num­ber of these claimants held a large pro­por­tion of the monies be­ing claimed;

• The var­i­ous law­suits/judg­ments against the Cen­tral Bank;

• The ra­tio­nale giv­en for ex­tin­guish­ing the right to sue the Cen­tral Bank in this mat­ter was that pub­lic rights and sta­bil­i­ty were be­ing giv­en pref­er­ence over the ex­er­cise of pri­vate rights.

I am al­so told that the MPs were not giv­en copies of the pre­sen­ta­tions, which seems to have ef­fec­tive­ly lim­it­ed them to gain­ing cer­tain im­pres­sions or the lim­it­ed notes they would have been able to take dur­ing the brief­ing.

That ac­count of events, giv­en to me by more than one Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, seems to sug­gest that the very ra­tio­nale of the ex­er­cise, said to be the el­e­va­tion of pub­lic rights over pri­vate ones, could have been sub­vert­ed.

Pub­lic rights v pri­vate rights

The re­al­i­ty is that, de­spite the ex­ten­sive de­bate on the mat­ter, this is the po­si­tion:

• Ac­counts: There has still been no prop­er, clear state­ment on the sta­tus of these CL Fi­nan­cial and Cli­co ac­counts, which is un­sat­is­fac­to­ry.

An emerg­ing view is that this is a cal­cu­lat­ed si­lence, since the com­pa­nies are in­sol­vent, which would make the di­rec­tors li­able for the crim­i­nal of­fence of "trad­ing while in­sol­vent." That is a con­sid­er­able is­sue, which could on­ly be over­come by the State is­su­ing a guar­an­tee to the group's cred­i­tors, which would have ex­posed the Trea­sury to the full ex­tent of the huge claims. The si­lence is a shab­by "third way," which gives a fur­ther in­sight in­to why the bailout re­mains un­ten­able to so many of us.

• There is no pub­licly avail­able pro­file of the monies owed in terms of amounts owed to cer­tain class­es of pol­i­cy­hold­ers. That is a ma­jor omis­sion and one can on­ly won­der why the in­for­ma­tion is be­ing ef­fec­tive­ly sup­pressed. In ad­di­tion, there were state­ments that the claims of cred­it unions and trade unions will be ful­ly paid, which seems to be a favourable treat­ment in com­par­i­son to the in­di­vid­ual claimants.

• In re­spect of the law­suits and judge­ments, I do not see how the block on law­suits against the Cen­tral Bank can stop claims in for­eign courts.

• The ra­tio­nale of pub­lic rights be­ing pre­ferred over pri­vate rights is a sol­id one in a mat­ter of this type, but up­on re­flec­tion one is left with a dif­fer­ent im­pres­sion. How can pub­lic rights be said to pre­vail in a sit­u­a­tion where the pub­lic is de­nied the es­sen­tial parts of the pic­ture?

Brief­in­gs shroud­ed in se­cre­cy

The Par­lia­ment ben­e­fits from brief­in­gs on com­plex and im­por­tant mat­ters, but it is un­ac­cept­able that those brief­in­gs should be some­how shroud­ed in se­cre­cy. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank need to pub­lish their full par­lia­men­tary brief­ing, with­out de­lay, to re­move any lin­ger­ing doubts.

Good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty de­mand no less.

An­oth­er as­pect of the emerg­ing sit­u­a­tion is the re­cent re­ports that the Board of In­land Rev­enue is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the three top CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tives for al­leged non-pay­ment of tax­es.

The No­vem­ber 13 re­port in a dai­ly news­pa­per stat­ed that the tax fil­ings of Lawrence Duprey, An­dre Mon­teil and Gi­ta Sakal were un­der of­fi­cial scruti­ny, in­cred­i­bly enough, it was al­so stat­ed that Duprey's chauf­feur was in re­ceipt of up to $3.9 mil­lion in a par­tic­u­lar year.

I had al­ways won­dered at whether peo­ple who en­joyed favour at the high­est lev­el re­al­ly paid all their tax­es. I have point­ed out that in the case of Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) there are se­ri­ous and unan­swered ques­tions on that point aris­ing from the af­fi­davits of the In­spec­tor of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions in the CIB wind­ing-up ac­tion.

It seems that fresh and se­ri­ous doubts are now aris­ing on the tax com­pli­ance of some of the top CL Fi­nan­cial of­fi­cials, so we will see. In view of the re­laxed stance tak­en in re­la­tion to an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and tax eva­sion in the re­vised bailout process, we should not be sur­prised if these BIR cas­es slip in­to ob­scu­ri­ty.

We need to be alert to the costs and oth­er con­se­quences of this cri­sis. Huge sums of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey are be­ing spent to res­cue com­pa­nies who do not ap­pear to have com­plied with our tax laws and there are no ac­counts be­ing dis­cussed.

Block­ing tac­tics

Last week Wednes­day and Thurs­day, I ap­peared be­fore the Col­man Com­mis­sion to give my tes­ti­mo­ny in this mat­ter. On Wednes­day af­ter­noon, there was a very neg­a­tive re­ac­tion to my at­tempts to in­tro­duce a pow­er point pre­sen­ta­tion as a way to bet­ter il­lus­trate some of the points I have been mak­ing. I am all for trans­paren­cy, so their patent­ly trans­par­ent block­ing tac­tics were most wel­come. Thank you, col­leagues, for show­ing the view­ers your true colours.That said, the com­mis­sion­er ruled that my ev­i­dence would be tak­en the next morn­ing and, so it was.

For those who are in­ter­est­ed and want to know what all the fuss was about, stay tuned to: www.afraray­mond.com, for a full ar­ti­cle on this sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing the so-called of­fen­sive slides.

With re­spect to the method of pre­sent­ing the ev­i­dence in the Col­man Com­mis­sion, I have some se­ri­ous con­cerns as to the ef­fect of re­ly­ing on­ly on writ­ten or oral tes­ti­mo­ny.The vol­ume and com­plex­i­ty of the ma­te­r­i­al and the fact that a wide au­di­ence, be­yond the at­tor­neys, is watch­ing this pub­lic en­quiry, means that there needs to be an up­grade in the way in which the in­for­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed.

I have writ­ten to the com­mis­sion on this al­ready and was shocked to learn that a re­quest for fur­ther fund­ing for mul­ti­me­dia was ap­par­ent­ly re­ject­ed at the high­est lev­el.There have been two pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tions to the Col­man Com­mis­sion-my own and Maria Daniel of Ernst & Young, who ap­peared just be­fore me-and, in both cas­es, the wit­ness­es had to rent their own equip­ment.

The pur­pose of this pub­lic en­quiry is to bring some light and jus­tice to this very shad­owy and crooked episode. I am here ask­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take prop­er lead­er­ship on this is­sue. The peo­ple need to see the ev­i­dence if they are to un­der­stand.I can well re­mem­ber the Prime Min­is­ter's cam­paign­ing words, echo­ing in my mind: "Serve the peo­ple! Serve the peo­ple! Serve the peo­ple!"

Fi­nal­ly, I am writ­ing to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion this week to re­quest, again, that they ob­tain de­c­la­ra­tions from the di­rec­tors of CL Fi­nan­cial, as re­quired un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

Afra Ray­mond is a char­tered sur­vey­or. He is pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ray­mond and Pierre Ltd. This se­ries on the CL Fi­nan­cial bailout can be viewed or read­ers' com­ments made at: www.afraray­mond.com

COR­REC­TION

In the print and In­ter­net edi­tions of the Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion of our news­pa­per for Sep­tem­ber 15, 2011, in a col­umn head­lined The Col­man Com­mis­sion: Bal­anc­ing the scale and writ­ten by Afra Ray­mond, it was print­ed and pub­lished of the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion as fol­lows:

"It is un­ac­cept­able that the Min­istry of Fi­nance could be tak­ing a po­si­tion which is seek­ing to ex­clude my ev­i­dence from the com­mis­sion. If that were so, it would mean that min­istry is act­ing in a man­ner which ef­fec­tive­ly di­lutes the com­mis­sion. What is more, it ap­pears to be in­com­pat­i­ble with the in­ten­tion of the Cab­i­net to have a full pub­lic en­quiry in­to this mat­ter of na­tion­al con­cern. In ad­di­tion, the Cen­tral Bank and the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion are al­so re­port­ed to have ob­ject­ed. The Col­man Com­mis­sion needs to be ro­bust in get­ting at the truth of this fi­nan­cial dis­as­ter."

We now ac­cept that the al­le­ga­tion con­cern­ing an ob­jec­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion to Mr Ray­mond's ev­i­dence is false.

We apol­o­gise un­re­served­ly for any in­con­ve­nience or dam­age caused to the Com­mis­sion by the pub­li­ca­tion to the ex­tent that the words re­ferred to above were ca­pa­ble of con­vey­ing the er­ro­neous im­pres­sion that the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion was act­ing in a man­ner which was in­tend­ed to hide the truth from the Col­man Com­mis­sion and to pre­vent the Col­man Com­mis­sion from ful­fill­ing its du­ties.