Raphael John-Lall

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said he is "com­fort­ed" that both the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC) are do­ing their jobs in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) IPO trans­ac­tion that led to the fir­ing of the bank's chief risk of­fi­cer Phillip Ra­haman."There is a com­mit­ment to move for­ward with pros­e­cut­ing as far as pos­si­ble and the DPP is the one that deals with this. I am con­fi­dent the DPP would do what is nec­es­sary to move that for­ward. "The sec­ond thing is that the SEC con­tin­ues in­de­pen­dent­ly to pur­sue its own line of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I know they are fair­ly well ad­vanced with that. From both an­gles all is cov­ered," he said.Howai spoke to the me­dia yes­ter­day at the State Boards Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance Sem­i­nar at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Last Thurs­day, Sub­has Ramkhelawan said he was re­sign­ing both posts as In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and chair­man of the SEC af­ter weeks of de­bate over whether he should re­sign af­ter he said no laws were breached when Ra­haman pur­chased $14.5 mil­lion in shares dur­ing its IPO last year. Al­so last Thurs­day, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan rec­om­mend­ed that the FCB IPO trans­ac­tion be re­ferred to the SEC and DPP for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.Howai ex­press­es "con­fi­dence" that there would be ac­tion be­cause the SEC has spe­cial pow­ers of its own."The SEC has a cer­tain amount of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty and there­fore they are pur­su­ing the mat­ter on their own. This com­ple­ments what the DPP is do­ing. I re­main con­fi­dent I would see ac­tion on this," he said.

He added that the is­sue is "far from over" but said con­fi­dence is im­por­tant in how FCB moves for­ward."There is a lot of work go­ing on right now and the im­por­tant thing is to en­sure that the con­fi­dence of all the de­pos­i­tors re­main This is an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is strong and has a wide fran­chise," he said.

Speak­ing about the Phoenix Park Gas IPO, he said the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing the ground­work for that."With re­spect to Phoenix Park we are prepar­ing all of the in­for­ma­tion now and get­ting ready to go. Cab­i­net would like to see this whole is­sue set­tled in some way be­fore we pro­ceed to the next side," he said.