Af­ter more than 24 months of en­quiry at great ex­pense to tax­pay­ers, pub­lic hear­ings in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the fail­ure of Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union end­ed yes­ter­day with sev­er­al key wit­ness­es fail­ing to ap­pear.Among the "no shows" were for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey; An­dre Mon­teil, the for­mer fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor; and Roger Trot­man, for­mer pres­i­dent of Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB), who were able to ig­nore all ef­forts to get them be­fore the en­quiry.That is be­cause al­though the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act states that wit­ness­es are "bound to obey the sum­mons served up­on them," there are no se­ri­ous penal­ties for dis­obey­ing. The risk of a $2,000 fine, which is the max­i­mum penal­ty un­der the cur­rent law, is less than a slap on the wrist for wealthy busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives.

But while these cru­cial Cli­co/HCU wit­ness­es were able to dis­re­gard the sum­mons of lone Com­mis­sion­er Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, there are many who will not emerge un­scathed from this ex­er­cise–hun­dreds of pol­i­cy­hold­ers and share­hold­ers who suf­fered dev­as­tat­ing loss­es in the col­lapse of these fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. Col­lec­tive­ly, bil­lions of dol­lars have al­ready been lost through the fail­ure of these en­ti­ties, so it would be a great trav­es­ty of jus­tice if the mil­lions of dol­lars spent to hold the en­quiry, not to men­tion the time and ef­fort in­volved, yield­ed lit­tle or noth­ing.Sev­er­al im­por­tant wit­ness­es re­fused to ap­pear be­fore the com­mis­sion af­ter it was re­vealed that a po­lice probe in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co had been ini­ti­at­ed by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard. Mr Duprey's le­gal team wrote to the com­mis­sion say­ing their client would be with­draw­ing from any fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion as a re­sult. Mr Mon­teil, who had sat in on sev­er­al of the pub­lic hear­ings, sim­ply stopped at­tend­ing.

These de­vel­op­ments raise the dis­turb­ing prospect of the en­quiry end­ing up as a very cost­ly ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty.If the most im­por­tant wit­ness­es can­not be com­pelled to at­tend, what is the point? Can any sub­stan­tial find­ings come out of a process which has been so ob­vi­ous­ly ham­pered by the non-com­pli­ance of the most vi­tal play­ers?The events of the past few days high­light fun­da­men­tal weak­ness­es in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act. The fact that wit­ness­es can sim­ply de­cide not to show up de­feats the pur­pose of mount­ing such an ex­er­cise in the first place.Nu­mer­ous en­quiries have been mount­ed in T&T over the decades. Re­ports have been laid in Par­lia­ment and from time to time rec­om­men­da­tions have been im­ple­ment­ed.How­ev­er, there is a wide­ly held per­cep­tion that these en­quiries yield few re­sults.

That is why the next step, to avoid any re­peat of what has just hap­pened with the Col­man Com­mis­sion, must be to re­vise and amend the act, adding much-need­ed leg­isla­tive teeth.

It might be too late to do any­thing about the ob­vi­ous gaps in ev­i­dence due to the lack of co-op­er­a­tion from many of the most im­por­tant wit­ness­es in the cur­rent en­quiry. But th­eloop­holes must be closed to en­sure that the law will not be flout­ed so eas­i­ly in the fu­ture.