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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Clico/HCU Commission delayed

by

20110406

The start of Sir An­tho­ny Col­man's am­bi­tious Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has been de­layed. The first oral ev­i­dence hear­ing of the En­quiry, which was set to be­gin on May 10, has been pushed back to June 27.

The de­ci­sion to re­vise the En­quiry's timetable came af­ter ob­jec­tions were raised by at­tor­neys that the time­frame giv­en to gath­er doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence and wit­ness state­ments was too short. Coun­sel to the En­quiry, Pe­ter Carter, QC, ac­knowl­edged that giv­en ob­jec­tions, raised first by Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC and then by Ian Ben­jamin, Gilbert Pe­tersen SC and Regi­nald Ar­mour SC, there was no prospect that the Com­mis­sion would be able to come up with a core bun­dle by May 10.

While Col­man had stat­ed his com­mis­sion "would not grind to a halt" be­cause of an "odd doc­u­ment", it was the bar­rage of doc­u­ments fac­ing the com­mis­sion and how it would be tabled which caused him to re­lent to a re­vised timetable. He ob­served that the pub­lic want­ed the En­quiry to get on with its work.

The COE is broad in scope- it deals with the fail­ure of six fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and now has 19 par­ties to the En­quiry. Five new par­ties have been added- the Hin­du Cred­it Union Mem­bers Group, KP­MG Foren­sic Canan­da, Joseph Cas­sidy, Karen Nunez-Tesheira and First Cit­i­zens.

The En­quiry looks in­to the fail­ure and col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed, Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank Lim­it­ed, British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed and the Hin­du Cred­it Union Co-Op­er­a­tive hit yes­ter­day. But Ar­mour point­ed out that while the oral hear­ings of the COE has been pushed back, it's wrong for peo­ple to think that it's been ad­journed as doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence was be­ing gath­ered in the in­ter­im. It was Ben­jamin who pro­posed the es­tab­lish­ment of a Doc­u­men­tary Work­ing Par­ty, which would con­sist of lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the COE par­ties, be set to col­lect rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and sift through them. This was a point which Col­man en­dorsed.

Par­ties now have un­til May 12 to sub­mit rel­e­vant doc­u­ments to the Com­mis­sion. Ther­after, a core bun­dle of doc­u­ments should be agreed up­on. Ar­mour raised the point that giv­en the ex­pense to his client, the Com­mis­sion should con­sid­er hear­ing the Cli­co mat­ter seper­ate from HCU's mat­ter. There was al­so a thorny is­sue about con­fi­den­tial­i­ty which was first raised by at­tor­ney Stu­art Young on be­half of his client Ernst & Young and then by Mar­tineau on be­half of his client, Price Wa­ter­House­C­oop­ers. E&Y was sub­pe­oned to ap­pear be­fore the En­quiry to pro­vide three re­ports it had been com­mis­sioned to do- on the HCU, CIB and British Amer­i­can. Young point­ed out that the CIB and BA re­ports were com­mis­sioned by the Cen­tral Bank and were pro­duced in con­tem­pla­tion of lit­i­ga­tion.

He ob­served that those re­ports en­joyed lit­i­ga­tion priv­i­lege while the HCU re­port, be­cause of on-go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the po­lice, had pub­lic in­ter­est im­mu­ni­ty. Young con­tent­ed the re­ports con­tained con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion. The COE, he point­ed out, was a dif­fer­ent set­ting from a High Court where doc­u­ments were pro­duced for a judge's eye on­ly. Mar­tineau said the same was true for his client, Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers. PWC was the au­di­tors of Cli­co, Cl Fi­nan­cial and An­gos­tu­ra. To this end, it was agreed that a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­to­col would be be es­tab­lished to deal with the doc­u­ments. The pro­ce­dur­al hear­ing con­cludes to­day.


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