Rhon­dor Dowlat

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona was pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day with the re­port on the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the events sur­round­ing the col­lapse of the Hin­du Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety (HCU).The re­port was com­piled by Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, the sole com­mis­sion­er. The en­quiry was set up on No­vem­ber 15, 2010 by for­mer pres­i­dent Prof George Maxwell Richards, fol­low­ing the fail­ure in 2008-2009 of the HCU and CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd, Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Ltd, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Ltd and Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd.

Col­man, in his ad­dress at the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny, said he was yet to com­plete the re­port on the Cli­co group as it in­volved fur­ther work and could not be com­plet­ed by the end of the year.

He added that it ap­peared at a very ear­ly stage in the en­quiry that the scope of its terms of ref­er­ence gave rise to or­gan­i­sa­tion­al prob­lems.He said: "In par­tic­u­lar there was very lit­tle over­lap be­tween the ev­i­dence re­lat­ing to the Cli­co com­pa­nies and that re­lat­ing to HCU."Sec­ond­ly, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of what had gone wrong in­volved an ex­treme­ly long times­pan go­ing back over nine years of trad­ing... five mil­lion doc­u­ments to con­sid­er."Third­ly, the num­ber of es­sen­tial par­ties and wit­ness­es was in­evitably go­ing to be very con­sid­er­able."

In the two parts, 57 wit­ness­es gave ev­i­dence, 33 of whom were sub­poe­naed. There were 14 Cli­co par­ties, nine HCU par­ties and 35 HCU wit­ness­es.Col­man said that made it ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly im­pos­si­ble to run both parts of the en­quiry si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.The hear­ings oc­cu­pied 85 sit­ting days, of which 27 were de­vot­ed to the HCU. The first HCU wit­ness­es gave ev­i­dence on Ju­ly 4, 2011 and the last on May 2, 2013.

Some Key ar­eas of the en­quiry

The cir­cum­stances, fac­tors, caus­es and rea­sons lead­ing to the Jan­u­ary 2009 in­ter­ven­tion by the Gov­ern­ment for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of four of the Cli­co com­pa­nies;n The caus­es, rea­sons and cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the fi­nan­cial con­di­tion of the Cli­co Com­pa­nies and HCU which threat­ened the in­ter­est of de­pos­i­tors, in­vestors, pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cred­i­tors and share­hold­ers.

The ef­fec­tive­ness of the au­dit­ing and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies with over­sight re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Cen­tral Bank and the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion.

Whether any third par­ty act­ed in a man­ner that mis­led de­pos­i­tors, in­vestors, pol­i­cy­hold­ers, cred­i­tors and share­hold­ers by neg­li­gent­ly or fraud­u­lent­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing the true fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the com­pa­nies.

To make find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions as to any grounds for crim­i­nal or civ­il pro­ceed­ings and whether such pro­ceed­ings should be rec­om­mend­ed to the DPP or the AG.