Yvonne Ba­boolal

Such se­ri­ous threats were made to Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU) liq­uida­tor Dave Ram­per­sad and his fam­i­ly had to hire body­guards for pro­tec­tion, he told the Cli­co/HCU Com­mis­sion of In­quiry yes­ter­day. Ram­per­sad was ap­point­ed liq­uida­tor of the HCU by the Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tives in Oc­to­ber 2008 af­ter the cred­it union went in­to liq­ui­da­tion. He told of re­peat­ed vi­o­lent be­hav­iour and thug­gery to­wards him and his staff from the HCU's board of di­rec­tors. Ram­per­sad gave ev­i­dence in the pres­ence of HCU pres­i­dent, Har­ry Harnar­ine, at yes­ter­day's hear­ing at Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain. Ram­per­sad told about the threats against him af­ter Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake asked if he had the co-op­er­a­tion of Harnar­ine and the cred­it union's board of di­rec­tors as he sought to man­age its re­sources and raise funds. Ram­per­sad replied no and added: "Their con­duct to­wards me was in­tim­ida­to­ry."

Asked if it was hos­tile, Ram­per­sad said: "It went be­yond hos­tile. Threats were made to­wards me, my fam­i­ly, my le­gal ad­vis­er. I had to em­ploy body­guards on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis in my home. "The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the po­lice. I al­so had a meet­ing with the then Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and sup­port was pro­vid­ed for me." Fur­ther, Ram­per­sad said Harnar­ine ac­tu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed him in the cor­ri­dor of the High Court dur­ing the tri­al of a le­gal mat­ter. Harnar­ine, sit­ting in the back of the court­room, bent his head in his arms which were rest­ing on the back of a chair in front of him as he lis­tened. "He shoved me, he used his hands to push me. The mat­ter was re­port­ed to my at­tor­ney who took it to the judge." He said there was re­peat­ed vi­o­lent be­hav­iour and thug­gery from the HCU's board to­wards him and his staff and it was not ad­vis­able to or­gan­ise mass gath­er­ings of the HCU mem­ber­ship. The HCU board al­so sought to tie Ram­per­sad's hands in court as well, he told the com­mis­sion. Ram­per­sad said he was try­ing at the time to dis­pose of the HCU's re­main­ing goods in or­der to raise funds but the board went to court in May 2009 seek­ing an or­der to re­strain him from do­ing so. He said, to this day, that mat­ter has not been set­tled and the de­lay has af­fect­ed his abil­i­ty to earn an in­come from the HCU prop­er­ties.

Peake in­formed him the judge pre­sid­ing over the mat­ter had re­tired and an­oth­er had to be ap­point­ed. A hear­ing has been sched­uled for Ju­ly. In an­oth­er mat­ter, the com­mis­sion heard share­hold­ers who made down­pay­ments on hous­es in the HCU's Pine View De­vel­op­ment still have not been able to ac­quire the hous­es. Ram­per­sad said he had not been able to get plan­ning ap­provals or com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates at the HCU or in Gov­ern­ment bod­ies for the de­vel­op­ment, which has 54 hous­es on 62 lots. He said he hired a team of ex­perts to do re­me­di­al work on the hous­es to ob­tain the com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates. All the HCU's sub­sidiary com­pa­nies, more in num­ber to which the cred­it union was legal­ly en­ti­tled, were in loss-mak­ing po­si­tions, too, he said. Most of them had few em­ploy­ees and some had none.

The HCU Fi­nan­cial Ltd, for in­stance, had one em­ploy­ee, Har­ry Harnar­ine, and his salary was record­ed as $50,000 a month, Ram­per­sad said. Miss­ing files on the HCU's in­vest­ments had made it dif­fi­cult for him to con­trol and man­age the cred­it union's re­sources, he said. He de­scribed the state of the HCU's records he met in 2008 as ex­treme­ly poor. Many files, re­lat­ing to 7,000 loans giv­en out by the HCU, could not be lo­cat­ed and there were no files per­tain­ing to the su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee which dealt with the ap­proval of loans, he added. Ram­per­sad said there was on­ly $98,000 in all the HCU's bank ac­counts and a sub­stan­tial amount was owed to the In­land Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, with some $3.1 mil­lion owed in PAYE and Health Sur­charge. Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board de­duc­tions from em­ploy­ees' salaries, amount­ing to $1.6 mil­lion, were nev­er paid and $598,000 was still owed to work­ers in out­stand­ing salaries, he said. The HCU owed a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey to the pub­lic util­i­ties as well, Ram­per­sad added.