In a state­ment is­sued on Mon­day, the Min­istry of Fi­nance said that it had re­viewed Fri­day's judg­ment of Madame Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee on the is­sue of Cli­co's Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um An­nu­ity (EF­PA) poli­cies and had formed the view that "there are grounds for ap­peal." The state­ment went on to add that Cli­co was "en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with its lawyers with a view to fil­ing an ap­peal against the said judg­ment." In the judg­ment, Jus­tice Ra­j­nauth-Lee ruled in favour of the six claimants who had brought ac­tion against the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny for its fail­ure to re­pay or re­turn monies that the six had in­vest­ed with it. Jus­tice Ra­j­nauth-Lee is­sued the judg­ment in favour of each of the claimants and against Cli­co in re­spect of the said EF­PAs and it is quite like­ly that the rul­ing, if it is up­held on ap­peal, would pro­vide a prece­dent for the treat­ment of oth­er pol­i­cy­hold­ers. The fact that the Min­istry of Fi­nance saw it fit to is­sue a re­lease say­ing that it in­tend­ed to ap­peal the judg­ment is in­ter­est­ing on sev­er­al lev­els.

First­ly, the min­istry was not pro­vid­ing the coun­try with in­for­ma­tion that was not al­ready in the pub­lic do­main as the fact that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to launch an ap­peal of the rul­ing of the high court judge was sig­nalled by Cli­co's at­tor­neys short­ly af­ter the rul­ing it­self. The sec­ond point of in­ter­est is that the state­ment was is­sued by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and not by the Cen­tral Bank or by the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny it­self. In Feb­ru­ary 2009, the Cen­tral Bank as­sumed con­trol of Cli­co by virtue of Sec­tion 44D of the Cen­tral Bank Act. At a news con­fer­ence on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Ewart Williams, said that the in­vo­ca­tion of the pow­ers un­der Sec­tion 44D was de­signed to achieve sev­er­al spe­cif­ic ob­jec­tives, in­clud­ing: "Con­fer­ring le­gal au­thor­i­ty to the Board, ap­point­ed in ac­cor­dance with the MOW (Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing) to man­age all of the busi­ness and un­der­tak­ings of Cli­co." Mr Williams al­so said that the Cen­tral Bank's con­trol of Cli­co was meant to pro­vide it with a le­gal ba­sis "for en­ter­ing in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with cred­i­tors in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate any debt re­struc­tur­ing that may be­come nec­es­sary" and the le­gal ba­sis, as well, for "ad­vanc­ing the fund­ing to which the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted in or­der to en­sure the pro­tec­tion of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers of Cli­co."

As far as the na­tion is aware, the Cen­tral Bank main­tains Sec­tion 44D con­trol over Cli­co and there­fore, most ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, it should have been the du­ty of ei­ther the Cen­tral Bank or the board of the in­sur­er to de­cide whether Cli­co would or should ap­peal the judg­ment. It is quite pos­si­ble that the state­ment by Min­istry of Fi­nance is ul­tra vires the Cen­tral Bank's 44D con­trol of Cli­co. If that is the case, it would be an in­di­ca­tion of how much in con­trol of the EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­er process the Min­istry of Fi­nance has be­come and a re­flec­tion of the lack of in­flu­ence of the Cen­tral Bank which, legal­ly, is the in­sti­tu­tion in con­trol of Cli­co. It is al­so in­ter­est­ing that the Min­istry of Fi­nance chose to is­sue a state­ment on this le­gal mat­ter, while main­tain­ing an ex­treme­ly no­tice­able si­lence on the pro­pos­al that has been wide­ly re­port­ed to be be­fore the Cab­i­net with re­gard to the res­o­lu­tion of the Cli­co is­sue. As­sum­ing, but not ac­cept­ing, that the Cli­co res­o­lu­tion pro­pos­es to pay EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers around 90 per cent of their in­vest­ments in the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, the Gov­ern­ment should be con­sult­ing with the pol­i­cy­hold­ers-in­clud­ing the six claimants who were suc­cess­ful in last Fri­day's case-to find out whether this would be ac­cept­able. It could very well be that such con­sul­ta­tion would lead to a more ac­cept­able re­sult than the long and pricey process of ap­peal­ing the judg­ment.