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Sunday, July 20, 2025

No-show witnesses so Clico probe ends early (with CNC3 video)

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20121210

The Cli­co/Hin­du Cred­it Union com­mis­sion of en­quiry end­ed four days pre­ma­ture­ly yes­ter­day as sev­er­al sched­uled wit­ness­es were out of the coun­try. Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, chair­man of the com­mis­sion, was vis­i­bly up­set at this de­vel­op­ment, de­scrib­ing the abrupt end­ing yes­ter­day as un­ac­cept­able. He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the cur­rent ses­sion of the en­quiry at Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group was sup­posed to give ev­i­dence yes­ter­day but the group asked to be al­lowed to give an abridged Pow­er­Point ver­sion, as more than one wit­ness would be over­seas. Col­man said it was not pos­si­ble, then asked if there were any oth­er wit­ness­es who could tes­ti­fy in the sched­uled pe­ri­od.

One of the ab­sent wit­ness­es was Ja­son Julien, a fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst at the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC). Col­man said it was "as­tound­ing" that a pub­lic body like the SEC could not find a sub­sti­tute wit­ness. He added: "We lost four days of hear­ing. This is not good."

In June, Col­man com­plained about wit­ness­es not show­ing up for sched­uled hear­ings. Three wit­ness­es were held in con­tempt of the com­mis­sion, which has the same sta­tus as a High Court. They were for­mer CEO of HCU Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Gaw­tam Ram­nanan, for­mer HCU fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant Jameel Ali and Dave Jag­pat. The next ses­sion of the en­quiry will be next Feb­ru­ary.

Yes­ter­day evening, Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group spokesman Pe­ter Per­me­ll said at­tor­ney Lynette See­baran Suite was sup­posed to give a pre­sen­ta­tion on var­i­ous CL Fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions on be­half of the group at the en­quiry to­mor­row. How­ev­er, Per­me­ll said, See­baran Suite left yes­ter­day on a busi­ness trip to Mi­a­mi.

Hen­ry Ham­let at CLI­CO in­quiry

Ham­let to the res­cue

How­ev­er, the day was not to­tal­ly lost. Hen­ry Ham­let, for­mer de­part­ment man­ag­er, health and life, Cli­co, tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. He spoke about his ex­pe­ri­ence at Cli­co and the prob­lems en­coun­tered, such as high in­ter­est rates, bloat­ed salaries and oth­er ef­fi­cien­cies that led to its cash­flow prob­lems.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Neal Bis­nath, at­tor­ney for Cli­co, Ham­let point­ed to some of the ma­jor prob­lems:?High lever­ag­ing of as­sets, dis­missal of key per­son­nel in the com­pa­ny, prob­lems in mar­ket­ing and a lack of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance. He gave the ex­am­ple of a $68 mil­lion loss be­cause of a deal with the HCU.

He said: "The HCU was go­ing through some dif­fi­cul­ties and they went in­to an arrange­ment with Cli­co to ex­change their li­a­bil­i­ties for over­val­ued prop­er­ty port­fo­lio. "The prop­er­ty re­ceived by Cli­co in­volved build­ings with lim­it­ed in­come-gen­er­at­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

"Be­cause of this," he said, "Cli­co in­curred $68 mil­lion in loss­es as a re­sult of that trans­ac­tion. Cli­co pro­vid­ed mort­gage fund­ing for the HCU Con­ven­tion Cen­tre which was out­side the ap­proval of the board." He re­ferred to the in­sur­ance pol­i­cy of for­mer Cli­co di­rec­tor Gene Dzi­adyk, who en­joyed spe­cial treat­ment from Duprey, who ap­proved an es­pe­cial­ly high in­ter­est rate.

He said: "I have a let­ter dat­ed April 2007 from Dzi­adyk and it says in ac­cor­dance with the amend­ment of the pol­i­cy in 2004, and ap­proved by Duprey, that 75.4 per cent shall be cred­it­ed to this pol­i­cy for the pe­ri­od 2004 to 2007. "At the end of April 2007, his in­sur­ance pol­i­cy was worth US$12.5 mil­lion. In three years, he moved from US$2.3 mil­lion to US$12.5 mil­lion."

Ham­let's wit­ness state­ment said: "Af­ter many years poor gov­er­nance, un­sus­tain­able in­ter­est rates and the mis­match­ing of as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties, Cli­co was no longer in a po­si­tion to sus­tain it­self." Bis­nath asked Ham­let to rec­om­mend oth­er wit­ness­es who could al­so tes­ti­fy. Ham­let gave the names of for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Duprey, Dzi­adyk and for­mer Cli­co CEO Ian Gar­cia.


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