If there was any doubt in any­one's mind that a res­o­lu­tion of the Cli­co de­ba­cle can nev­er be achieved un­less and un­til the 15,000 bona fide "as­sent­ing" third-par­ty pol­i­cy­hold­ers are paid their just due by the PP Gov­ern­ment, I trust that the re­cent ex­pos� and sub­se­quent events of the past two weeks would have put to bed any such no­tion.

It al­so bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the re­silience and re­source­ful­ness of a de­ter­mined group of pol­i­cy­hold­ers and their unswerv­ing com­mit­ment to one com­mon goal of be­ing paid the con­trac­tu­al terms and con­di­tions of their poli­cies–not from the trea­sury but from the now ful­ly fund­ed Cli­co statu­to­ry fund.

I can­not help but re­flect on the fact that most of them did not know each oth­er pri­or to Sep­tem­ber 2010 when they were told by the then fi­nance min­is­ter that the in­ter­est on their EF­PA poli­cies con­tracts would be frozen sine die. I al­so can­not help but re­flect on the rea­son giv­en at the time. I be­lieve the min­is­ter said that he was look­ing for "ghost" ac­counts and added sub­se­quent­ly that EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers had to take a hair­cut on the prin­ci­pal sum in­vest­ed. But I di­gress.

The ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence above is to the clan­des­tine, sur­rep­ti­tious, ob­scene, im­moral, and vex­a­tious at­tempt to in­clude Cli­co/CLF for­mer di­rec­tors, their fam­i­ly mem­bers and re­lat­ed pri­vate com­pa­nies as part of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar pay­out in­tend­ed to bring much need­ed re­lief to the 1,500 bona fide non-as­sent­ing third-par­ty pol­i­cy­hold­ers an­nounced by the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor in March 2015.

More­over, giv­en pedes­tri­an ex­cus­es that I have heard thus far, the more I think of it, what seems to have tran­spired here is rem­i­nis­cent of the 2006 sus­pense-thriller In­side Man di­rect­ed by Spike Lee. The movie cen­tres on an elab­o­rate bank heist on Wall Street over a 24-hour pe­ri­od. It stars Den­zel Wash­ing­ton as De­tec­tive Kei­th Fra­zier, NYPD's hostage ne­go­tia­tor and Clive Owen as Dal­ton Rus­sell, the mas­ter­mind who or­ches­trates the heist.

Rus­sell opens the film with a pro­logue about hav­ing car­ried out the "per­fect rob­bery." A van is seen dri­ving from Brook­lyn to the Wall Street area; in­side is a team of masked rob­bers, dressed as painters, who call each oth­er by vari­ants of the name "Steve" (ie Steve, Ste­vie, Ste­vo). They seize con­trol of a Man­hat­tan bank and take the em­ploy­ees and pa­trons hostage. They di­vide the hostages in­to groups and hold them in dif­fer­ent rooms, forc­ing them to strip and don painters' clothes iden­ti­cal to their own.

Po­lice sur­round the bank and De­tec­tives Fra­zier and his col­league take charge of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. When Rus­sell (the crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind) is asked how he in­tends to leave the bank, he tells them "right through the front door." The po­lice even­tu­al­ly storm the bank and de­tain every­one, know­ing that some of the hostages are clev­er­ly in­clud­ed among the mem­bers of the gang, but can't dis­tin­guish be­tween who is hostage and who is ban­dit.

They in­ter­ro­gate all the "hostages" harsh­ly, ques­tion­ing their hon­esty and try­ing to glean use­ful in­for­ma­tion, to no avail. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a search of the bank re­veals that the rob­bers' weapons are plas­tic repli­cas. With no way to iden­ti­fy the ban­dits from the bona fide hostages and un­sure if a crime has been com­mit­ted, Fra­zier's su­pe­ri­or, on or­ders from the may­or, tells him to drop the case. And even though Fra­zier per­sists, Rus­sell and his ac­com­plices even­tu­al­ly get off scots free hav­ing com­mit­ted the per­fect crime.

It there­fore begs the ques­tion are there any par­al­lels that can be drawn from the above and re­cent mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar pay­out to for­mer di­rec­tors, or is this sim­ply a case of life im­i­tat­ing art? Did the per­pe­tra­tors walk­out with the third-par­ty pol­i­cy­hold­ers? We pre­fer to let the in­tel­li­gent and dis­cern­ing pub­lic be the judge.

Pe­ter Per­me­ll

Chair­man

Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group