Denyse Renne

The lone com­mis­sion­er in the en­quiry in­to the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed, Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, QC, yes­ter­day ruled that Cli­co busi­ness mag­nate Lawrence Duprey and for­mer group fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor of CL Fi­nan­cial, An­dre Mon­teil, must present them­selves to tes­ti­fy at the on­go­ing en­quiry.

Col­man, in a 32-page rul­ing de­liv­ered yes­ter­day and dis­trib­uted to var­i­ous at­tor­neys seek­ing an in­ter­est at the en­quiry, gave sev­en di­rec­tions to Duprey and Mon­teil, af­ter an ap­pli­ca­tion by the men that they not tes­ti­fy at the en­quiry be­cause the po­lice had start­ed a crim­i­nal probe in­to the mat­ter.In his rul­ing, Col­man di­rect­ed that Duprey and Mon­teil once again be served with sum­mons­es and must at­tend the hear­ing.

"Hav­ing at­tend­ed they must go in­to the wit­ness box and take the oath. They must then ver­i­fy their name and ad­dress, fol­low­ing which coun­sel for both the men and the com­mis­sion will ask se­lect­ed ques­tions as dis­tinct as from every sin­gle mi­nor ques­tion," Col­man wrote in his rul­ing.Such ques­tions must be dis­closed to at­tor­neys two days pri­or to the men tes­ti­fy­ing.Col­man said should ei­ther Duprey or Mon­teil claim the self-in­crim­i­na­to­ry priv­i­lege, the onus will be on him to in­voke such.

In Jan­u­ary, Duprey, 79, wrote to the com­mis­sion say­ing he was un­will­ing to ap­pear be­fore it to give ev­i­dence. He said he was ini­tial­ly will­ing to tes­ti­fy at the en­quiry, but up­on con­sult­ing his le­gal team, was ad­vised not to take part in it since the po­lice had be­gun an of­fi­cial probe in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co. Duprey sub­se­quent­ly wrote to say he was with­draw­ing his le­gal team from the pro­ceed­ings.The Gov­ern­ment has so far spent some $20 bil­lion to bail out Cli­co, which col­lapsed in 2009.

The 12th hear­ing of the en­quiry is sched­uled for April 29 at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.Tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en at the en­quiry so far has al­leged hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were squan­dered and mil­lions of dol­lars trans­ferred dur­ing sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions.On No­vem­ber 8 last year, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, in a me­dia re­lease, said the po­lice had start­ed a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in­volved in the col­lapse of Cli­co and re­lat­ed com­pa­nies.

The an­nounce­ment came as Gas­pard warned the me­dia "should not pub­lish or broad­cast any­thing which might jeop­ar­dise, hin­der or oth­er­wise prej­u­dice the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or any pos­si­ble pro­ceed­ings which might re­sult from it." He al­so wrote to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Col­man over the pub­lic hear­ing of the en­quiry, say­ing if the en­quiry went on it was like­ly to de­lay a pros­e­cu­tion and jeop­ar­dise the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The AG, how­ev­er, re­fused to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to sus­pend the en­quiry im­me­di­ate­ly, or at least vary its terms of ref­er­ence. Col­man al­so re­fused Gas­pard's re­quest, say­ing it was ul­ti­mate­ly up to the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide whether the en­quiry should con­tin­ue in light of a po­lice probe.