Resh­ma Ra­goonath

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence is set to file an­oth­er court ac­tion against the State over the Cli­co mat­ter, this time he is chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the Pur­chase of Cer­tain Rights and Val­i­da­tion Bill 2011 and amend­ment to the Cen­tral Bank Act. The amend­ments ef­fec­tive­ly re­move the rights of Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers to take the com­pa­ny to the court to seek re­dress. Yes­ter­day Ma­haraj, ad­dress­ing a meet­ing of the Unit­ed Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group at San Fer­nan­do City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um, sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to file the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion to nul­li­fy the amend­ment. This comes days af­ter he filed for ju­di­cial re­view of Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to make good on its promise to Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers to pay them for their poli­cies.

Last week Ma­haraj, on be­half of Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um An­nu­ity (EF­PA) pol­i­cy­hold­ers, filed for ju­di­cial re­view in the San Fer­nan­do High Court. Yes­ter­day he told the pol­i­cy­hold­ers that the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion will seek to have the amend­ment de­clared un­con­sti­tu­tion­al since it in­fringes on cit­i­zens' con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. He as­sured the pol­i­cy hold­ers that he and his le­gal team will fight for their pro­tec­tion. Ma­haraj called on all cit­i­zens to join forces with the pol­i­cy­hold­ers and "stand up against this in­jus­tice." He said Gov­ern­ment used its Par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to pass the amend­ment and if cit­i­zens do not stand up now it could very well use that same pow­er to si­lence the trade union move­ment.

The bill seeks to "pro­vide for the pur­chase of cer­tain rights" of the hold­ers of short-term in­vest­ment prod­ucts is­sued by CLI­CO Trinidad Lim­it­ed and British Amer­i­can. Un­der the leg­is­la­tion the fi­nance min­is­ter has the au­thor­i­ty to "is­sue 20 bonds of vary­ing ma­tu­ri­ties from one to 20 years, and which shall not ex­ceed in the ag­gre­gate TT$10.7 bil­lion (US$1.7 bil­lion), af­ter which he may is­sue ad­di­tion­al bonds". The amend­ment in­di­cates that no cred­i­tor, share­hold­er, de­pos­i­tor, pol­i­cy­hold­er, or any oth­er per­son, shall have any rem­e­dy against the in­sti­tu­tion, in re­spect of any claim and that these peo­ple shall not "con­tin­ue any ac­tion, ex­e­cu­tion or oth­er pro­ceed­ings or seek to en­force in any way, what­so­ev­er, with­out lim­i­ta­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, any judg­ment or or­der ob­tained in Trinidad and To­ba­go or any oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion against the in­sti­tu­tion or its suc­ces­sor." He said, "Gov­ern­ment and Cen­tral Bank ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay your mon­ey."