Asha Javeed

Short­ly af­ter sign­ing a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for his cash-strapped com­pa­nies, for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey was ne­go­ti­at­ing to sell one of the Group's most lu­cra­tive as­sets, Methanol Hold­ings (MHTL). In his cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of MHTL chief ex­ec­u­tive Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, at­tor­ney for Pro­man Hold­ings, Christo­pher Hamel-Smith pro­duced an email string from Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009 which showed the chair­man of Cli­co En­er­gy Lim­it­ed (CEL), Duprey's Ger­man part­ners in MHTL, ac­cept­ing CL Fi­nan­cial's of­fer sub­ject to terms and con­di­tions. Word of the pro­pos­al by Duprey to sell CL Fi­nan­cial's 56 per cent stake in MHTL to the methanol com­pa­ny's 44 per cent for­eign share­hold­ers was dis­closed yes­ter­day as at­tor­neys con­tin­ued to cross-ex­am­ine Moti­lal on the sale of Cli­co En­er­gy Ltd.

Hamel-Smith al­so pro­duced an email which showed that cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gi­ta Sakal for­ward­ed a 2007 val­u­a­tion of MHTL for CEL to pur­sue. Moti­lal told the on-go­ing Cli­co Com­mis­sion of En­quiry yes­ter­day that while he was copied on that let­ter, he sim­ply drew that let­ter to the at­ten­tion of the CLF board for their con­sid­er­a­tion. Hamel-Smith ques­tioned whether CEL's of­fer was be­ing con­sid­ered giv­en the risks posed by the world en­vi­ron­ment for MHTL. Moti­lal main­tained that it was an op­tion but said it would be in­cor­rect to say there was need for him per­son­al­ly to con­sid­er any­thing. "I would de­ny hav­ing any in­ter­est or be­ing in­volved in any ac­tiv­i­ty for con­sid­er­a­tion of the sale," Moti­lal told the COE.

And de­spite Moti­lal's con­sis­tent de­fense that he re­mained un­aware of the sale of Cli­co En­er­gy Lim­it­ed, he ad­mit­ted that he did not in­ter­ro­gate the sale at the board lev­el as he should have. In an­swer to an ear­li­er ques­tion by at­tor­ney Fyard Ho­sein SC, Moti­lal said while he was not "alarmed" by the sale, he did not raise the is­sue with the CLF board. He told the Com­mis­sion he was wait­ing for a more com­pe­tent per­son to raise the is­sue as he did not have all the facts at his dis­pos­al. When it was point­ed out that he was a mem­ber of the sub-com­mit­tee of the board with a man­date to be re­spon­si­ble for the dis­pos­al of as­sets, Moti­lal said he in­ter­pret­ed his role dif­fer­ent­ly.

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, which he pro­duced for the COE, Moti­lal wrote: "The sub-com­mit­tee was mind­ful at all times to work with­in the frame­work es­tab­lished by the MOU. This task be­came more chal­leng­ing af­ter an in­junc­tion was filed against CL Fi­nan­cial re­strain­ing the com­pa­ny, its of­fi­cers, etc from deal­ing, ne­go­ti­at­ing, sell­ing etc as­sets of Cli­co as it ap­pears that the in­junc­tion was grant­ed on the ba­sis of an­oth­er trans­ac­tion by CL Fi­nan­cial ie.the sale of its share­hold­ing and the share­hold­ing of Cli­co in Cli­co En­er­gy Ltd with­out the pri­or no­ti­fi­ca­tion or sanc­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance of the Cen­tral Bank and which to date has not al­so been brought to the at­ten­tion of the CLF Board for dis­cus­sion ap­proval pr rat­i­fi­ca­tion as may be ap­plic­a­ble."

Of Duprey, Moti­lal lat­er told the COE that: "I am sure he spent many sleep­less nights try­ing to ca­jole sub­or­di­nates and sub­sidiaries to re­port." Moti­lal will con­tin­ue his cross ex­am­i­na­tion to­day. For­mer cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gi­ta Sakal is al­so ex­pect­ed to take the wit­ness stand to­day. Mean­while, Com­mis­sion Col­man has ruled that the means of re­mu­ner­a­tion for CL Fi­nan­cial of­fi­cials should be dis­closed to the Com­mis­sion but not the ac­tu­al quan­tifi­ca­tion of them.