Yesterday's announcement out of Calgary, Canada, that an oil company belonging to CL Financial had been sold to a small, recently formed Canadian energy company is but the latest reminder of the paucity of locally generated information following the collapse of Lawrence Duprey's empire in January 2009. Primera, the local oil company once owned by CL Financial, was sold to a company named Touchstone Exploration, which was established about a year ago. The sale price was reported in a Touchstone news release to be US$50.7 million ($326 million) and previous Guardian reporting had quoted CL Financial Chairman Gerry Yetming as saying that the proceeds of the sale of Primera would be applied to reduce the indebtedness of CL Financial's majority-owned subsidiary, the Jamaica-based Lascelles deMercado. It is quite noteworthy that neither the current administration nor the previous one has been minded to provide the nation with a comprehensive, politics-free statement of affairs on the CL Financial empire since its collapse was announced at a news conference at the Central Bank on January 30, 2009.
Neither the previous Minister of Finance, Karen Tesheira, nor the current holder of that office, Winston Dookeran, has been bothered to present status reports on their stewardship of the biggest financial collapse in the country's history. The State took control of the financial companies in CL Financial-Clico, Clico Investment Bank, British American Insurance Company and Caribbean Money Market Brokers (CMMB)-at the end of January, 2009. In the months that followed, the State pumped some $5 billion into Clico, CMMB was sold to First Citizens for $1, the deposits in Clico Investment Bank were transferred to First Citizens, and efforts were made to restructure British American. The indisputable fact is that one company in the empire received billions in cash and bonds from the State and two other companies were taken over by the State-owned bank. All told, thousands of individual and corporate investors with billions of dollars in savings or investments were affected by the events of January 2009, yet neither the current administration nor the previous one has seen it fit to provide a proper accounting to the people of T&T, whose taxes went to bail out private companies.
It is a state of affairs that is almost certain to be unprecedented in the history of democratic capitalism.
What makes matters worse is that for each of the thousands of investors whose money has been tied up in Clico or British American, there is a story of anguish, hurt and deprivation. Similar stories were broadcast live last week as 10 depositors or shareholders in the Hindu Credit Union (HCU) testified before the commission of enquiry into the collapse of the Clico and HCU empires. Many of those who testified on the HCU matter said they had chosen to invest with the credit union, hoping that they would have been able to enjoy their golden years by accessing a lifetime's savings. For many of them, the collapse of HCU represented the destruction of their dreams for comfort in their old age. The same is undoubtedly true with regard to the policyholders in Clico and British American who, for reasons that still have not been properly explained, have so far failed to participate at the commission of enquiry in the numbers expected.
In the face of the suffering involved among the investors in Clico, British American and HCU-suffering that reaches in to each and every family in this country-it is surprising that the Government has maintained its silence on the issue of the resolution of the policyholders and depositors. More than nine months after the Minister of Finance announced in his budget presentation that the People's Partnership administration proposed to pay Clico policyholders with more than $75,000 over 20 years with zero-coupon bonds, that issue is still before the Cabinet. And there has been even less information on what, if anything, the Government plans to do to resolve the HCU depositors. There are some occasions on which silence is not golden and information on the life savings of a significant percentage of the population qualifies as such an occasion.