In his most re­cent in­ter­views with the Guardian, Lawrence Duprey, for­mer Chair­man of CL Fi­nan­cial has his own nar­ra­tive of his time at the helm of the failed fi­nan­cial em­pire. Duprey claims to have on­ly want­ed to help peo­ple save their mon­ey and to im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing.The eco­nom­ic down­turn, in this ver­sion of the sto­ry of Cli­co's fail­ure, was the vil­lain that laid those am­bi­tions low.

In a se­ries of in­ter­views over the last five weeks, Lawrence Duprey worked hard to es­tab­lish that nar­ra­tive in con­ver­sa­tions with vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Owen Bap­tiste.He was per­son­al­ly fru­gal dur­ing his time at the help of the fi­nan­cial em­pire and con­cerned on­ly with the suc­cess of his com­pa­ny and to­day, he told the Guardian in No­vem­ber 2012, he is both flat broke and fo­cused on phil­an­thropy, seek­ing to en­hance the well-be­ing of the less for­tu­nate around the world.

In April, Mr Duprey and his wife, Sylvia Bal­di­ni, op­er­at­ing as Sable Re­sorts Inc, sold three ho­tels to stave off fore­clo­sure and set­tle TT$30 mil­lion in mort­gage pay­ments. Sable Re­sorts still owns The Front Ho­tel and apart­ments at Bayshore Dri­ve val­ued at US$1.3 mil­lion.Lawrence Duprey has in­ferred that the Cen­tral Bank snuck his com­pa­ny away, that the flood of red ink on the books was man­age­able and that he was let down by key mem­bers of his or­gan­i­sa­tion.

These state­ments, like so many that Mr Duprey has made from the rel­a­tive safe­ty of Flori­da, duck the type of fact-based cross-ex­am­i­na­tion that might have re­sult­ed from an ap­pear­ance at the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to CL Fi­nan­cial and Hin­du Cred­it Union.There, Duprey might have been called on to ex­plain the ex­ten­sive in­tra­com­pa­ny bor­row­ing which broke the back­bone of the com­pa­ny, to of­fer his strat­e­gy to re­turn his com­pa­ny to vi­a­bil­i­ty and per­haps to of­fer the coun­try an ex­pla­na­tion, if not an out­right apol­o­gy.

Every strat­e­gy, no mat­ter how clear­ly suc­cess­ful, fol­lowed by his cor­po­rate com­peti­tors, was mis­guid­ed and off base. Every ob­jec­tion or con­tra­dic­tion of his point of view is an as­sault on his char­ac­ter and his rep­u­ta­tion.It seems clear, from Mr Duprey's snub­bing of the Col­man Com­mis­sion, that he has no in­ten­tion of sub­mit­ting to any se­ri­ous scruti­ny of his busi­ness strate­gies and de­ci­sion mak­ing in the fi­nal years of Cli­co's op­er­a­tions un­der his lead­er­ship.

The com­mis­sion, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Cen­tral Bank, it seems, must pre­pare to be about the busi­ness of prepar­ing their re­ports and plan­ning their next steps with­out the per­spec­tive or par­tic­i­pa­tion of Mr Duprey. The for­mer chair­man has in­di­cat­ed, more clear­ly in re­cent weeks than ever be­fore, that he's done with this coun­try, and with the com­pa­ny he led to soar­ing heights and ig­no­min­ious ru­in.

Here is a cap­tain, safe on dis­tant shores, con­tent to calm­ly watch his ship founder on the rocks of fis­cal re­al­i­ty on­to which he had set course.Mr Duprey now seems set on his own course to res­cue his fam­i­ly's good name. And that's a path that has no rel­e­vance to the re­al­i­ty of Cli­co or the mas­sive debts that re­main in the com­pa­ny's wake.