Yvonne Ba­boolal

For­mer Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU) ex­ec­u­tives who re­fused to ap­pear at the Cli­co/HCU Com­mis­sion of En­quiry are not go­ing to get away scot-free, a com­mis­sion source has said. For­mer HCU fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant Jameel Ali, HCU CEO Ravin­dra Bachan, CFO Gaw­tam Ram­nanan and trea­sur­er Yad­wanath Lalchan may face civ­il and crim­i­nal charges if the com­mis­sion finds suf­fi­cient grounds in doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to it to com­mence le­gal pro­ceed­ings against them.

De­spite be­ing asked to ap­pear, the quar­tet did not turn up at the in­quiry to re­spond to in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion al­leg­ing they com­mit­ted sev­er­al acts of wrong­do­ing while em­ployed at the HCU. Ali was sup­posed to ap­pear on Mon­day or Tues­day, but failed to do so for a sec­ond time. Ini­tial­ly, he was sum­moned to ap­pear in Ju­ly but a doc­tor tes­ti­fied that he was ill.

It was one of the main rea­sons why com­mis­sion chair­man Sir An­tho­ny Col­man post­poned yes­ter­day's hear­ing, the source said. "He will now have to de­cide how to ex­er­cise the pow­ers in­vest­ed in him un­der the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act to deal with the men."

At Tues­day's sit­ting, Col­man said he was ad­journ­ing yes­ter­day's ses­sion to "ex­er­cise his pow­ers" against Ali. Un­der the Com­mis­sion's of In­quiry Act, a wit­ness who has been sum­moned but fails to ap­pear can be charged with con­tempt. The source said the com­mis­sion had sched­uled a cer­tain amount of time to deal with the HCU and ex­pect­ed Ali, who was no­ti­fied, to ap­pear be­tween last Mon­day and Wednes­day.

At Tues­day's hear­ing, Chanka Seeter­ram, hired by the HCU to au­dit their books, told the in­quiry that Ali was a qual­i­fied ac­coun­tant who worked in his firm be­fore he be­came a con­sul­tant for the cred­it union.