Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is­sued spe­cial di­rec­tions to the Cen­tral Bank on Ju­ly 13, which led to the in­sti­tu­tion di­rect­ing Cli­co to make the fi­nal set­tle­ment of statu­to­ry fund li­a­bil­i­ties to the Gov­ern­ment, ac­cord­ing to a doc­u­ment leaked to the Guardian by the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group.

The doc­u­ment ap­pears to be a pho­to­graph of a let­ter re­lat­ing to the min­is­ter's pow­er un­der sec­tion 44F(5) of the Cen­tral Bank Act to give gen­er­al or spe­cial in­struc­tions to the Bank.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, Cli­co was di­rect­ed to pre­pare the share trans­fer doc­u­ments to ef­fect the trans­fer of Cli­co's shares in An­gos­tu­ra and CL World Brands to the Gov­ern­ment.

Those shares, which were in­de­pen­dent­ly val­u­aed are be­ing trans­ferred "in con­sid­er­a­tion for ex­tin­guish­ing of $1.908 bil­lion of statu­to­ry fund li­a­bil­i­ties owed to the Gov­ern­ment."

Cli­co was al­so di­rect­ed to pay the re­main­ing bal­ance of about $2.6 bil­lion to the Gov­ern­ment in cash from oth­er Cli­co as­sets "in­stead of await­ing the val­u­a­tion and trans­fer of Cli­co's Home Con­struc­tion Ltd shares with the sum of $1.3 bil­lion be­ing paid with­in sev­en days of the Bank's di­rec­tion to Cli­co and the re­main­ing bal­ance of $1.3 bil­lion be­ing paid with­in four week of the Bank's di­rec­tion to Cli­co."

In the Sen­ate on Ju­ly 7, Im­bert said Cli­co owed the Gov­ern­ment $2.1 bil­lion for as­sent­ing, non-res­i­den­tial and mu­tu­al non-res­i­den­tial and the in­sur­er owed non-as­sent­ing STIP hold­ers and mu­tu­al fund in­vestors $400 mil­lion.

But he added that "Cli­co does not cur­rent­ly have suff­fi­cient cash to re­pay the whole of this amount ($2.5 bil­lion) and the Gov­ern­ment has thus agreed that Cli­co can re­pay the $400 mil­lion due to third par­ty pol­i­cy­hold­ers in ad­vance of mak­ing pay­ment to the Gov­ern­ment on their $2.1 bil­lion."

In his Ju­ly 13 in­struc­tions, Im­bert called on the Cen­tral Bank to di­rect Cli­co to make the fi­nal pay­ment of statu­to­ry fund li­a­bil­i­ties to third par­ty STIP hold­ers, mu­tu­al fund hold­ers and the Gov­ern­ment.

In do­ing this, Cli­co was in­struct­ed by the Cen­tral Bank to "sub­or­di­nate the Gov­ern­ment's claim of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.1 bil­lion as as­signee of the rights of non-res­i­den­tial STIP hold­ers and of mu­tu­al fund hold­ers to en­able full pay­ment to non-Gov­ern­ment STIP hold­ers and mu­tu­al fund in­vestors of all out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties due to them at the same time as Cli­co makes fi­nal pay­ment to statu­to­ry fund STIP hold­ers.

In an ad­ver­tise­ment ap­pear­ing in to­day's Guardian, Cli­co gave no­tice of pay­ments to res­i­dent and non-res­i­dent STIP hold­ers.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group chair­man, Pe­ter Per­me­ll said the group had con­cerns over what now ap­pears to be the 'in­de­cent haste' with which the Fi­nance Min­is­ter seems to be mov­ing to try to get the both "as­sent­ing" and "non-as­sent­ing" EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers out of the way, as ev­i­denced by his un­for­tu­nate Ju­ly 7 state­ment in the Sen­ate that as­sent­ing pol­i­cy­hold­ers "do not form part of the (Gov­ern­ment's) Cli­co Res­o­lu­tion Plan."

Per­me­ll said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was at­tempt­ing to fast­track a "flawed" Cli­co plan while sub­or­di­nat­ing the gov­ern­ment's claim on be­half of tax­pay­ers pur­suant his pow­ers un­der sec­tion 44F(5).