Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to pay out about $500 mil­lion to de­pos­i­tors of the for­mer Hin­du Cred­it Union but no mon­ey will be paid to wrong­do­ers, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Lar­ry Howai said dur­ing his windup of yes­ter­day's de­bate on the Pur­chase of Cer­tain Rights (HCU) Bill in Par­lia­ment. One of the ma­jor pro­vi­sions of the bill is to au­tho­rise the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to sign agree­ments, make pay­ments and is­sue bonds to pur­chase the rights be­long­ing to the HCU share­hold­ers and de­pos­i­tors.

In ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised by PNM MP Colm Im­bert that those re­spon­si­ble for HCU's col­lapse could ben­e­fit from the pay­out, Howai stressed: "Un­der no cir­cum­stances is the Gov­ern­ment pre­pared to make any pay­ment to any re­lat­ed par­ties. This is not about bail­ing our wrong­do­ing. We are bail­ing out the in­no­cent vic­tims of this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion." He said the for­mer cred­it union op­er­at­ed like a run­away horse and caused grief to in­di­vid­u­als who in­vest­ed in it.

He told leg­is­la­tors that amend­ed leg­is­la­tion would be brought to Par­lia­ment soon to en­sure there was no re­peat of the HCU fi­as­co and as­sured there would be the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a regime of mea­sures that would pre­vent a re­cur­rence of such a prob­lem. "We will be able to move ear­li­er, more ef­fec­tive­ly and we will be able to make stronger de­ci­sions to deal with the spe­cif­ic is­sues," he said. Howai said sev­er­al stake­hold­er rec­om­men­da­tions were in­clud­ed in the pro­posed cred­it union leg­is­la­tion that would be brought to Par­lia­ment short­ly.

The min­is­ter said, how­ev­er, that noth­ing was be­ing done to weak­en the sec­tor. Ac­cord­ing to Howai, a regime of leg­is­la­tion, re­lat­ing to the in­sur­ance in­dus­try, the se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try and cred­it unions, will be in place by the end of the year. Howai al­so de­fend­ed a de­ci­sion to have for­mer First Cit­i­zens chair­man Nyree Al­fon­so on sev­er­al boards at the same time, which was raised ear­li­er in the de­bate by St Joseph MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Howai said such a sit­u­a­tion was nec­es­sary for con­sis­ten­cy. He said the bank­ing sec­tor was reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank and if it felt there was an is­sue it would have said so. "There is good rea­son for why the struc­ture is the way it is," he added. He said Al­fon­so, who was re­moved as chair of the board in the wake of the First Cit­i­zens IPO fi­as­co, was "not do­ing any­thing that I think could have been con­sid­ered as be­ing im­prop­er or cer­tain­ly the Cen­tral Bank would have made a com­ment had that been so."

Al­so yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Op­po­si­tion MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Speak­er Wade Mark ex­tend­ed In­di­an Ar­rival Day greet­ings to cit­i­zens. They spoke of the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance and the con­tri­bu­tions of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty since ar­riv­ing here 169 years ago from In­dia. Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er MPs were dressed in tra­di­tion­al East In­di­an cloth­ing to mark the oc­ca­sion.