Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

The re­port on the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry (COI) in­to the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire and the Hin­du Cred­it Union will be laid in Par­lia­ment this af­ter­noon.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie is list­ed to present the re­port to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the fail­ure of CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd, Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Ltd (Cli­co), Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank Ltd, British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Ltd, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd and the Hin­du Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd.

The COI was ap­point­ed on No­vem­ber 17, 2010, by then-pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor George Maxwell Richards, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

The COI in­volved a sole com­mis­sion­er, the late then-Queen’s Coun­sel Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, a re­tired British High Court judge.

Col­man de­liv­ered the fi­nal re­port of the COI in 2016.

Then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had re­ceived the re­port. He sent it to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard for his com­ments and ad­vice on the time when the re­port should be made pub­lic in its en­tire­ty or par­tial­ly.

The DPP sub­se­quent­ly re­spond­ed to Row­ley, in­di­cat­ing that there was an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion by his of­fice in­to Cli­co, which be­gan in 2012.

Con­se­quent­ly, as a re­sult of the con­tin­u­a­tion of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the DPP had ad­vised Row­ley and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment cab­i­net that the Col­man re­port should not be made pub­lic.

Row­ley, in a 2016 state­ment to Par­lia­ment, stat­ed that the re­port con­tained “a num­ber of ad­verse find­ings of crim­i­nal con­duct of a klep­to­crat­ic na­ture” and there were rec­om­men­da­tions in it which the DPP was re­quired to con­sid­er.

Row­ley said he had pe­rused the re­port and ad­vised that it con­tained very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal mis­con­duct “on the part of a hand­ful of priv­i­leged in­di­vid­u­als who were as­so­ci­at­ed with the Cli­co/CLF Group” of com­pa­nies.

Row­ley said his gov­ern­ment would not do any­thing to im­pede the flow of jus­tice on that mat­ter or any oth­er mat­ter.

The re­port’s rec­om­men­da­tions and find­ings in­clud­ed crim­i­nal charges for for­mer of­fi­cials of the failed Cli­co in­sur­ance gi­ant and its par­ent com­pa­ny, CL Fi­nan­cial. Wide­spread fraud was not­ed and there was crit­i­cism for the Cen­tral Bank in the con­duct of its du­ties.

The COI cost $80 mil­lion. Col­man died in 2017.

In 2019, High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad—in a mat­ter con­cern­ing cer­tain Cli­co com­pa­nies—called up­on the then PNM gov­ern­ment to re­view its de­ci­sion not to make the re­port pub­lic.

The UNC, while in op­po­si­tion, had promised to make the re­port pub­lic. Short­ly af­ter the UNC won the April 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the re­port would be laid in Par­lia­ment.

To­ba­go bill, traf­fic

warn­ing bill al­so due

The de­bate to­day will al­so fo­cus on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (Amend­ment) Bill 2026, which seeks to in­crease the num­ber of THA ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil sec­re­taries from the cur­rent sev­en to 11 and is al­so geared to in­crease the num­ber of mem­bers re­quired to con­sti­tute a quo­rum at an as­sem­bly meet­ing.

Fur­ther de­bate will be done on the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill 2026. This con­cerns the re­cent­ly in­creased traf­fic vi­o­la­tion fines.

It fa­cil­i­tates new sec­tions of the law de­tail­ing the pro­ce­dure and process­es which fol­low af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer is­sues a fixed penal­ty warn­ing for a traf­fic vi­o­la­tion.

This was added af­ter pub­lic out­cry re­gard­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the dou­bling of fines and cus­toms fees.