Raphael John-Lall

For­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey has been sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the Cli­co/HCU com­mis­sion of en­quiry next Tues­day. An­dre Mon­teil, for­mer group fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor, has al­so been sum­moned to ap­pear on the same day. Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, chair of the com­mis­sion, yes­ter­day grant­ed an or­der ap­plied for by Ger­ald Ramdeen, ju­nior coun­sel to the en­quiry.

Ramdeen said: "We in­vite you to ex­er­cise your pow­ers, un­der Sec­tion 11 of the Com­mis­sion of the En­quiry Act, to com­pel the at­ten­dance of Mr Lawrence Duprey and Mr An­dre Mon­teil by is­su­ing sum­mons­es to both these men.The grounds for the re­quest, he said, were: "Mr Duprey and Mon­teil have both par­tic­i­pat­ed in pro­ceed­ings be­fore this com­mis­sion from in­cep­tion and both of them have tak­en full ad­van­tage dur­ing that time of cross-ex­am­in­ing wit­ness­es who have been good enough to at­tend the en­quiry."

Ramdeen said af­ter more than 24 months of the en­quiry, on Jan­u­ary 22, Duprey's le­gal team had writ­ten to the com­mis­sion say­ing Duprey would be with­draw­ing from any fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion.He said: "It is in­deed un­for­tu­nate that both Mr Mon­teil and Mr Duprey have now, at this 11th hour, tak­en this po­si­tion of not tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore your en­quiry, hav­ing both been giv­en the fullest op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate since the in­cep­tion.

"We in­vite you to find, based up­on the ev­i­dence giv­en be­fore your com­mis­sion, that both of them were in­di­vid­u­als that were cen­tral to the events that you are re­quired to look in­to, by virtue of your terms of ref­er­ence."The pub­lic in­ter­est would re­quire that a pub­lic or­der be made by you to Mr Duprey and Mr Mon­teil to ap­pear be­fore you and give ev­i­dence."He added: "The ac­tions of Mr Duprey and Mr Mon­teil sug­gest that they are not pre­pared to vol­un­tar­i­ly come be­fore you and give ev­i­dence and in those cir­cum­stances we ask you to ex­er­cise those pow­ers vest­ed in you to com­pel their at­ten­dance by is­su­ing those sum­mons­es."

Col­man said: "So far as Mr Duprey is con­cerned, he had first in­di­cat­ed that he was pre­pared to ap­pear and give ev­i­dence. The com­mis­sion at that stage did not sub­mit any sub­poe­na against him."The com­mis­sion hav­ing not is­sued those or­ders against him was di­rect­ly a con­se­quence of the un­der­tak­ing which was giv­en to ap­pear be­fore the en­quiry."Now that un­der­tak­ing has been with­drawn, it seems to me now that an or­der needs to be made against him and that he should ap­pear."

Ramdeen re­spond­ed: "Mr Mon­teil's po­si­tion is dif­fer­ent to that of Mr Duprey, in that be­cause Mr Mon­teil was nev­er made a par­ty to your com­mis­sion."But Col­man de­scribed Mon­teil as a "po­ten­tial par­tic­i­pant" and said he saw no rea­son why an or­der should not al­so be made against Mon­teil for the same date.Last No­vem­ber 8, just be­fore the start of the tenth ev­i­dence hear­ing in De­cem­ber, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard an­nounced that the po­lice had start­ed a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in­volved in the col­lapse of Cli­co and re­lat­ed com­pa­nies.

Duprey now lives in the US.

Kei­th Daniel, a Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers en­gage­ment leader of the au­dit­ing team for Cli­co be­tween 2003 and 2007, gave ev­i­dence yes­ter­day.Ed­win Glas­gow, coun­sel to the en­quiry, ar­gued that Daniel's team of au­di­tors over­looked many prob­lems that arose in Cli­co's fi­nances.

He said: "It ap­pears that you, like every­body else, did not look at CL Fi­nan­cial's ac­count. If any­one had looked they would have seen in 2007 that CL Fi­nan­cial made a loss of $1.2 bil­lion. If you did not look at this, do you know if any­one else who was work­ing on your team looked at CL Fi­nan­cial fig­ures?"

Daniel replied: "That ques­tion would have to be posed to CL Fi­nan­cial's au­dit­ing team. I was not part of the en­gage­ment team for 2007."Yes­ter­day was the third day of the 11th ses­sion of the en­quiry at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.