Rachael Es­pinet

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai will re­view doc­u­ments from both axed Cli­co chair­man Ger­ald Yet­ming and Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran in con­nec­tion the re­cent Cli­co pay­out to four for­mer di­rec­tors, which ul­ti­mate­ly cost Yet­ming his job.

In ad­dress­ing the is­sue on CNC3 yes­ter­day, Howai, not­ing the con­flict­ing state­ments of the par­ties in­volved, said he would not cast any judg­ments on the mat­ter un­til he had seen the "un­der­ly­ing doc­u­ments" from both sides. But while he has al­ready re­ceived the in­for­ma­tion from Cen­tral Bank, he said he was yet to see any doc­u­ments from Cli­co.

"I sup­pose there will be a num­ber of nu­ances that will arise from what peo­ple thought they un­der­stood or didn't un­der­stand. I would pre­fer to wait be­fore I could then say this is some­thing we should or shouldn't," Howai said.

On Fri­day last, the Cen­tral Bank is­sued a state­ment an­nounc­ing that Yet­ming's ap­point­ment as chair­man had been ter­mi­nat­ed, along with the re­vo­ca­tion of Car­olyn John as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

The Cen­tral Bank said the two were fired af­ter Cli­co failed to fol­low the March 26 in­struc­tions giv­en by the bank on the pro­ce­dure for all dis­burse­ments to pol­i­cy­hold­ers and cred­i­tors un­der the Cli­co Res­o­lu­tion Plan. The in­struc­tions in­clud­ed ob­tain­ing ap­proval from the bank for all pay­ments pri­or to dis­burse­ment.

Yet­ming, how­ev­er, has in­sist­ed that no pro­to­cols or in­struc­tions from the Cen­tral Bank were breached. He al­so called on Ram­bar­ran to ex­plain his ac­tions re­gard­ing the dis­missals.

In re­sponse to the con­tro­ver­sy, Howai yes­ter­day said: "The Gov­er­nor ad­vised me of the cir­cum­stances. He did speak to me on Fri­day morn­ing to con­firm that Cli­co had made pay­ments al­though the Cen­tral Bank had giv­en writ­ten in­struc­tions not to do so.

"Sub­se­quent­ly, he did send an email back to me say­ing this is what he was go­ing to do. He did send me some­thing pri­or.

"Sub­se­quent to that, the chair­man sent ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion which seems to have a dif­fer­ent take on what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened. As a con­se­quence, what I have done is asked to see the un­der­ly­ing doc­u­ments which sup­port the po­si­tion be­ing sug­gest­ed by ei­ther side."

Howai added that the Cen­tral Bank told him that they nev­er gave any ap­proval for the pay­ments.

"What had hap­pened was that Cli­co pro­vid­ed them with the in­for­ma­tion and they were in the process of re­view­ing that in­for­ma­tion. They met with Cli­co rep­re­sen­ta­tives to dis­cuss the in­for­ma­tion they had be­fore them and they were then sup­posed to re­port back to the Gov­er­nor, who was sup­posed to make a de­ci­sion," Howai said.

Asked about the state­ments by the Cen­tral Bank last week in de­fend­ing pay­outs to the di­rec­tors who did not have lit­i­ga­tion against them, Howai said the Cen­tral Bank took the stance that legal­ly, the pay­ments were due to be made but fur­ther ap­proval was need­ed.

"Yes, legal­ly the pay­ments were due to be made as they had no le­gal is­sues. How­ev­er, there were ad­di­tion­al things that they need­ed to check and con­firm be­fore agree­ing that they can pro­ceed," he said.

Ad­dress­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Yet­ming be­ing vin­di­cat­ed in the mat­ter, Howai said he did not want to spec­u­late on the is­sue un­til he could ver­i­fy the facts.

Pay­out plan

The is­sue in­volv­ing Yet­ming and John de­vel­oped af­ter the me­dia re­port­ed that four for­mer di­rec­tors, their com­pa­nies and con­nect­ed par­ties had al­ready been paid some $36.1 mil­lion last week.

Ram­bar­ran had de­fend­ed Cli­co's right to pay the for­mer di­rec­tors, say­ing a sum of over $63 mil­lion was put aside to pay ten for­mer di­rec­tors. How­ev­er, when the me­dia re­port­ed that the four di­rec­tors–Ian Gar­cia and his com­pa­ny, Events Un­lim­it­ed; Clin­ton Ram­ber­ans­ingh and his con­nect­ed par­ties (Bian­ca Ram­ber­ans­ingh and Mar­ti­na De Sil­va); Vish­nu Ram­lo­gan and Nigel Sali­na and his com­pa­ny, Nigel Sali­na and As­so­ciates–had al­ready been paid, the move drew pub­lic crit­i­cism.

In de­fend­ing him­self, Yet­ming had in­di­cat­ed that the on­ly in­di­vid­ual he was specif­i­cal­ly no­ti­fied not to pay out any mon­ey to was for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gi­ta Sakal, who is part on an on­go­ing le­gal mat­ter with the com­pa­ny.

The Cen­tral Bank had al­so an­nounced that apart from Sakal, for­mer CLF chair­man Lawrence Duprey and CFO An­dre Mon­teil, al­so part of the same lit­i­ga­tion, would al­so not be en­ti­tled to pay­ments.