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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

CCJ surpasses initial US$100m investment

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20140125

The ini­tial cap­i­tal in­vest­ment of US$100 mil­lion in the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Trust Fund was sur­passed dur­ing the course of 2013, ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates re­vealed to T&T Guardian.The 2012 an­nu­al re­port of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Trust Fund had re­port­ed that de­spite a pre­cip­i­tous de­cline in glob­al in­vest­ment mar­kets dur­ing the world­wide fi­nan­cial cri­sis of 2008, the Fund has in fact re­bound­ed over the last few years.

Trust Fund records show re­turns on in­vest­ments - net of dis­burse­ments, con­tri­bu­tions and ex­pens­es - reached +15.9 per cent in 2009 and +10.3 per cent in 2010 be­fore de­clin­ing -1.8 per cent in 2011 and re­cov­er­ing to +10.1 per cent in 2012.The Fund's long-term tar­get an­nu­al rate of re­turn is 8.9 per cent.

In fact, pro­jec­tions are the US$100 mil­lion ini­tial cap­i­tal in­vest­ment will prove to have been sur­passed dur­ing the course of last year as the 2013 ac­counts are al­so ex­pect­ed to re­flect re­turns in ex­cess of 10 per cent. At the end of 2012, the Fund bal­ance was US$93.7 mil­lion.

This in­for­ma­tion fol­lows the claim by Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son, dur­ing a re­cent me­dia work­shop in An­tigua, that the cur­rent re­turns were be­low what was en­vis­aged and this meant, in his view, the Court would im­mi­nent­ly have to re­quest from Cari­com mem­ber states a fur­ther in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal in­to the CCJ Trust Fund. The Fund was es­tab­lished to elim­i­nate the need for an­nu­al sub­ven­tions from par­tic­i­pat­ing states and thus in­su­late the Court from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

"No court in the world does not re­ly on tax­pay­ers' funds for sup­port," CCJ pres­i­dent Sir Den­nis By­ron said in an in­ter­view with T&T Guardian.Jus­tice By­ron de­scribed use of the CCJ Trust Fund as the best fund­ing mech­a­nism in the world for any court.He did not dis­miss re­course to mem­ber states to meet new "strate­gic ob­jec­tives", but said re­turns on the Fund have so far been more than ad­e­quate to meet the op­er­at­ing and oth­er ex­pens­es of the Court.

This was even in the face of in­fla­tion, fluc­tu­at­ing in­vest­ment mar­kets and low­er in­ter­est rates pre­sent­ing a chang­ing in­vest­ment cli­mate for the Fund.Jus­tice By­ron said he saw no need at this time for a "top up" by mem­ber coun­tries.One an­a­lyst said the Fund's port­fo­lio was well di­ver­si­fied and in­clud­ed a va­ri­ety of in­vest­ments at­tract­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of re­turn, with­out an over-re­liance on any one as­set class.

In its 2012 an­nu­al re­port, for ex­am­ple, the Fund's Port­fo­lio As­set Com­po­si­tion com­prised over 50 per cent in US and Non-US eq­ui­ties, along with emerg­ing mar­ket and pri­vate eq­ui­ty, while 23.2 per cent was in­vest­ed in hedge funds.Ini­tial cap­i­tal for the Fund was raised in 2005 through loans to mem­ber states arranged by the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB). Un­der the 2004 agree­ment es­tab­lish­ing the Fund, T&T is re­spon­si­ble for 29.73 per cent and Ja­maica 27.09 per cent of the in­vest­ment.

Nei­ther of these two ma­jor con­trib­u­tors has signed on to the ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion of the Court, but they have both been at the cen­tre of ma­jor rul­ings re­lat­ed to the orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion which fo­cus­es on ad­her­ence to the Cari­com Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.Un­der the CCJ's head­quar­ters agree­ment with T&T, ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es such as hous­ing of the Court and util­i­ty bills are be­ing met by the host coun­try.

There are sev­en sit­ting judges of the Court, with pro­vi­sion for an ad­di­tion­al three who can be brought on board should more coun­tries sign on to the Court's ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion.


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