As the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire in Jan­u­ary 2009 con­tin­ues, the pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go is anx­ious­ly await­ing clar­i­ty on two of the is­sues out­lined in the terms of ref­er­ence that the sole com­mis­sion­er, Eng­lish Queen's Coun­sel Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, was man­dat­ed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to car­ry out.The first is­sue, out­lined in the terms of ref­er­ence, is that the com­mis­sion­er should en­quire in­to the "cir­cum­stances, fac­tors, caus­es and rea­sons" lead­ing to the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire in Jan­u­ary 2009.Giv­en the tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial fi­nance di­rec­tor Michael Car­ballo, and oth­ers, there can be lit­tle doubt that the gen­er­al pub­lic has a much clear­er idea of the fi­nan­cial wheel­ing and deal­ing that may have con­tributed to the col­lapse of the re­gion's largest con­glom­er­ate.But there is an­oth­er im­por­tant area of en­quiry, al­so man­dat­ed in the terms of ref­er­ence, on which the com­mis­sion has been less suc­cess­ful in cast­ing the bright light of trans­paren­cy.

Sir An­tho­ny's man­date clear­ly re­quires that he should have a pre­cise idea of the as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties of Cli­co, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, British Amer­i­can and CMMB "and the ex­tent to which the ex­ist­ing as­sets of the said com­pa­nies are ca­pa­ble of meet­ing the fi­nan­cial de­mands of in­vestors, pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cred­i­tors, de­pos­i­tors and share­hold­ers of said com­pa­nies."In or­der to ful­fil this term of ref­er­ence, Sir An­tho­ny is re­quired to have two dis­crete sets of in­for­ma­tion: knowl­edge of the net val­ue of the four com­pa­nies that are the sub­jects of the en­quiry, as well as knowl­edge of the ex­tent to which that val­ue can be used to sat­is­fy the le­git­i­mate de­mands of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cred­i­tors, de­pos­i­tors and share­hold­ers of the com­pa­nies.But it is sim­ply not enough for the specif­i­cal­ly man­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion on the as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties of the four com­pa­nies to re­main a se­cret shared by the sole com­mis­sion­er and the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous clients at the en­quiry.

That in­for­ma­tion should be made avail­able to the peo­ple of T&T through the broad­cast of the in­for­ma­tion on live tele­vi­sion, the stream­ing of the event on the com­mis­sion's Web site, as well as re­ports in the na­tion's news­pa­pers.We raise the is­sue of the pub­li­ca­tion of the fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion of the four CL Fi­nan­cial com­pa­nies in the con­text of an ap­par­ent agree­ment by cer­tain par­ties in­volved in the com­mis­sion of en­quiry to redact some of the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by the Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd (MHTL) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, based on a no­tion of "com­mer­cial sen­si­tiv­i­ty."Giv­ing ev­i­dence at yes­ter­day's sit­ting, Mr Moti­lal re­ferred to the fact that the com­pa­ny's net in­come ranges be­tween US$300 mil­lion and US$350 mil­lion based on rev­enue of about US$2 bil­lion and from as­sets of US$3.2 bil­lion. He even al­lowed that MHTL had paid its lo­cal share­hold­ers, who own about 56 per cent of the four-mil­lion-tonne-a-year methanol pro­duc­er, a div­i­dend of US$56 mil­lion in 2006.

But no­tice­ably ab­sent from his tes­ti­mo­ny was any spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to MHTL's an­nu­al prof­its, div­i­dends, rev­enue, in­ter­est pay­ments and re­tained earn­ings since es­tab­lish­ment.That the com­mis­sion of en­quiry al­lowed the ar­gu­ment about "com­mer­cial sen­si­tiv­i­ty" to stretch enough to cov­er MHTL's ba­sic fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion-which is wide­ly avail­able to the glob­al methanol in­dus­try-is sur­pris­ing and re­gret­table giv­en the fact that Cli­co owns 56 per cent of MHTL, that Cli­co re­ceived over $5 bil­lion in tax­pay­ers' funds and that, as a re­sult of that bailout, the State owns 49 per cent of Cli­co.It is rec­om­mend­ed that the many ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­neys in­volved in this mat­ter should as­sist the com­mis­sion fur­ther by bring­ing fresh eyes to this is­sue of "com­mer­cial sen­si­tiv­i­ty" and fram­ing the dis­cus­sion in the con­text of the pub­lic's right to know, the vast sum of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars pumped in­to Cli­co and the fact that pub­li­ca­tion of fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion is one of the terms of ref­er­ence of this en­quiry.