Do we re­mem­ber in June of 2011 when it was re­vealed that the Cen­tral Bank re­fused to dis­close re­ports from the foren­sic au­dit­ing of Bob Lindquist and the KP­MG body in­to the Cli­co fi­as­co? It was the Gov­ern­ment of PM Bisses­sar through the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al who in­ter­vened in the mess at CLI­CO. At that time the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank adopt­ed a sort of ob­struc­tion­ist at­ti­tude to­wards the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry.

The Gov­er­nor is a great aca­d­e­m­ic, an ex­pe­ri­enced and re­spect­ed econ­o­mist and must have known that the role of the Cen­tral Bank is an im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry as the CLI­CO Em­pire did not col­lapse overnight. The Gov­er­nor was ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing and su­per­vis­ing CLI­CO and fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests with him as the over­sight body.

The fol­low­ing ques­tions still loom with a dark and dis­mal cloud:

(1) Were there no warn­ing signs that Cli­co was tech­ni­cal­ly in­sol­vent? Why was an In­sur­ance com­pa­ny al­lowed to trans­act busi­ness and op­er­ate like a reg­u­lar bank, when it had no li­cense to do so?

(2) Who au­tho­rised Cli­co to sell the Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble An­nu­ity Prod­ucts(which were in sub­stance and ef­fect a mere fixed de­posit)? Did the Gov­er­nor not find it sus­pi­cious that Cli­co was able to of­fer such ridicu­lous­ly su­pe­ri­or in­ter­est rates as com­pared to the rest of our fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions ?

(3) The Cen­tral Bank must be ac­count­able and should not be al­lowed to hide be­hind tech­ni­cal­i­ties. The Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Mr Ewart Williams did not pay Mr Bob Lin­quist out of his pock­ets to con­duct any in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Tax­pay­ers who are pol­i­cy­hold­ers like my­self and thou­sands of oth­ers paid for this. The old peo­ple have a gold­en say­ing: "If you do noth­ing, you have noth­ing to fear." Try watch­ing the tele­vised ver­sions of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry go­ing on now with the de­funct Hin­du Cred­it Union. I wish any­one tak­ing over the reins the best as I would have done like Eliz­a­beth Mont­gomery from "Be­witched" or Bar­bara Eden from "I dream of Ge­nie" and dis­ap­peared in sec­onds.

Liesel Mon­trichard

Via e-mail