A mem­ber of the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU) board, who re­mains on­ly a mys­te­ri­ous voice on the tele­phone to this day, called the Min­istry of Fi­nance short­ly be­fore the in­sti­tu­tion's col­lapse, ex­pos­ing fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. That was told to the Cli­co/HCU com­mis­sion of en­quiry yes­ter­day at the Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain. An­tho­ny Pierre, head of the Cred­it Union Su­per­vi­so­ry Unit (CUSU) at the Min­istry of Fi­nance from 1996 to 2006, sub­mit­ted in­to ev­i­dence con­ver­sa­tions he had with the board mem­ber he iden­ti­fied on­ly as "the whistle­blow­er." The "whistle­blow­er" even wrote an un­signed let­ter to the min­istry, he said.

"He spoke to me per­son­al­ly on two oc­ca­sions," Pierre said. "He seemed very firm in his po­si­tion but re­fused to be iden­ti­fied."

The mys­te­ri­ous voice told Pierre of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety at the HCU, in­volv­ing prop­er­ties be­ing pur­chased with­out prop­er pro­ce­dures, fal­si­fied val­u­a­tions of prop­er­ties and schol­ar­ships be­ing award­ed in se­cret. Pierre said he passed on the in­for­ma­tion to then fi­nance min­is­ter Con­rad Enill and the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the min­istry. Asked if he didn't go to the po­lice, he replied, amused: "Why would I do that? It was a sit­u­a­tion at the cred­it union, not a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate the prime min­is­ter. He didn't re­veal his iden­ti­ty." Pierre said the "whistle­blow­er" told him then Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment (COD) Kei­th Ma­haraj was "a waste of time and was in con­spir­a­cy with Har­ry." Har­ry Harnar­ine is the for­mer pres­i­dent of the HCU. Pierre said the HCU was not al­ways on the CUSU's radar be­cause it was small and rel­a­tive­ly in­signif­i­cant un­til 2002. He said in 2002, he be­came "alarmed" when the HCU be­gan to reg­is­ter150 and 200 per cent growth a year.

The cred­it union's de­posits had grown in ex­cess of US$150 mil­lion or TT$9 bil­lion, he dis­closed. That was one of the rea­sons why the CUSU was es­tab­lished, Pierre said. "We want­ed to en­sure that the HCU's growth was con­sis­tent with good prac­tice," he told the com­mis­sion. But the CUSU nev­er had the leg­isla­tive teeth to su­per­vise the fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions of cred­it unions, Pierre said. The CUSU then be­gan to re­ceive com­plaints from de­pos­i­tors and re­ferred them to Ma­haraj, who was not re­spon­sive, he said. It went out of ex­is­tence in 2006 and ini­tia­tives launched to cor­rect reg­u­la­to­ry and struc­tur­al weak­ness­es in the cred­it union sys­tem have not gone any­where, Pierre added. He said rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of a mil­lion-dol­lar In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank-as­sist­ed project have not been im­ple­ment­ed, ei­ther.