Derek Achong

Queen's Coun­sel Al­lan New­man said yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment's lat­est bail-out plan in­volv­ing Re­pub­lic Bank shares is out­side the Statu­to­ry Fund. New­man made the ob­ser­va­tion yes­ter­day at the hear­ing of a ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore Jus­tice Joan Charles in the Port-of-Spain High Court brought by the Unit­ed Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group.

New­man, mak­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the State, not­ed that the Statu­to­ry Fund was cur­rent­ly with­in the pre­scribed per­cent­age un­der the In­sur­ance Act. New­man how­ev­er de­clined when ques­tioned by Charles to re­veal de­tails of the ex­act in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the Fund. In re­sponse to New­man's sub­mis­sion yes­ter­day the group's at­tor­ney Pe­ter Knox, in con­trast, sug­gest­ed that the funds from the lat­est plan an­nounced in De­cem­ber last year, dubbed "NEC 2," should have been ap­plied to the Statu­to­ry Fund.

New­man, in re­sponse to sub­mis­sions made by the group's at­tor­neys, al­so asked Charles to con­sid­er the ex­ist­ing lit­i­ga­tion brought by Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cur­rent­ly be­fore Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad. "The is­sue in the case deal­ing with Per­cy Far­rell and oth­ers is in­ter­twined with this ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion but should be dealt with in the Far­rell case," New­man said. New­man's sub­mis­sion that both cas­es were sim­i­lar was re­ject­ed by Knox who at­tempt­ed to il­lus­trate the dif­fer­ences. Knox said: "The on­ly thing that is sim­i­lar be­tween the cas­es is that they in­volve Cli­co." The val­ue of the group's claim was yes­ter­day re­vealed to be in ex­cess of $350 mil­lion which rep­re­sents the in­vest­ments of the group's mem­bers in Cli­co's Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um An­nu­ities (EF­PAs). The group is al­so seek­ing sev­er­al de­c­la­ra­tions from the court in­clud­ing in­ter­im or­ders com­pelling Gov­ern­ment to sup­ply in­for­ma­tion as to Cli­co's cur­rent as­sets.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the group said yes­ter­day that such in­for­ma­tion would help the group's mem­bers de­cide if to join Gov­ern­ment's pay-out plan which ex­pires in June, this year. New­man claimed that to re­pay all Cli­co pol­i­cy hold­ers in full, the Gov­ern­ment would have to raise tax­es and re­duce pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture. "There is an over­rid­ing in­ter­est for Gov­ern­ment to change its orig­i­nal plan. There is just not enough mon­ey to pay every­one," New­man said. New­man in his sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day al­so ap­pealed to the court to not grant the group's ap­pli­ca­tion be­cause, he said, it dealt with macro­eco­nom­ics prin­ci­ples and pol­i­cy. "The court should de­fer to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance's de­ci­sion and not try to be a min­is­ter it­self," New­man said. In their ap­pli­ca­tion the group claims that promis­es made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2009, amount­ed to a guar­an­tee that pol­i­cy­hold­ers would be paid sums that were held in the cash-strapped con­glom­er­ate. The group al­so claims that the Gov­ern­ment's lat­est plan, an­nounced in De­cem­ber last year, is ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent from their ini­tial of­fer in Jan­u­ary 2009, dur­ing the Cen­tral Bank bail-out of Cli­co.

The le­gal ac­tion was brought against the Gov­ern­ment last year and list­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a par­ty giv­en her role as head of Cab­i­net. Dur­ing his sub­mis­sions on be­half of the group last week, Knox quot­ed nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles in news­pa­pers which dealt with Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed pay-out plan which, he said, showed an evo­lu­tion of the plan. New­man yes­ter­day op­posed the use of the re­ports say­ing that "the Court should not re­ly on re­ports from a third par­ty." New­man al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing for the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion not­ing that it should have com­menced af­ter the Sep­tem­ber 8, 2010, ini­tial an­nounce­ment of the plan by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and not 15 months lat­er in 2011. Al­so ap­pear­ing on be­half of the group was Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and at­tor­ney Pe­ter Strand. Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake is ap­pear­ing for the State in the mat­ter which was ad­journed to a date to be fixed by the court.