Derek Achong

A com­pa­ny with a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ing in CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF), which has put for­ward a pro­pos­al to clear the con­glom­er­ate’s re­main­ing debt to the Gov­ern­ment, has lost its bid to ob­tain its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial records for the past three years.

De­liv­er­ing an oral de­ci­sion at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, High Court judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran ruled that the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Ve­hi­cle In­fra­struc­ture Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (NEVI­COTT) was not en­ti­tled to the doc­u­ments, which it claims is nec­es­sary to se­cure US$2 bil­lion from for­eign in­vestors.

Ram­cha­ran stat­ed that con­glom­er­ate’s liq­uida­tors were not re­quired to pro­duce such records con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent state of the com­pa­ny and that the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with such an ex­er­cise out­weigh the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that he had con­cerns over the vi­a­bil­i­ty of NEVI­COTT’s pro­pos­al.

“The in­for­ma­tion does not sat­is­fy me that there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that ac­tion would be suc­cess­ful in bring­ing the com­pa­ny out of liq­ui­da­tion,” he said.

Ram­cha­ran did note that the con­glom­er­ate’s joint liq­uida­tors ad­mit­ted that they had is­sues with find­ing the com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial records for be­tween when the Gov­ern­ment bailed it out in 2009 to when it (the Gov­ern­ment) suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to liq­ui­date it in 2017.

“I make no com­ment on the fail­ure of the board but that is what might have land­ed the com­pa­ny in the po­si­tion it is in now,” Ram­cha­ran said.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Ram­cha­ran dis­missed NEVI­COTT’s par­al­lel ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion seek­ing to block moves by the joint liq­uida­tors to dis­pose of CLF’s stake in Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed and Hol­i­day Inn in Trinci­ty.

His de­ci­sion now clears the way for the liq­uida­tors to com­plete the trans­ac­tions.

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter­wards, NEVI­COTT’s lawyer Pe­ter Tay­lor ad­mit­ted that Ram­cha­ran’s de­ci­sion de­railed its plans to clear the debt and re­take con­trol of the con­glom­er­ate’s re­main­ing as­sets.

“Yes, it does af­fect our pro­pos­al be­cause we would have need­ed the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments. No one was go­ing to in­vest in a com­pa­ny if they do not know its health,” Tay­lor said.

He al­so said that he and his client were dis­ap­point­ed by the out­come.

“Trans­paren­cy must be at the core of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion, liq­ui­da­tion or any type of dis­pos­ing of as­sets. What we have found as share­hold­ers, is that any time you are with­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion, it means you have some­thing to hide,” he said.

Tay­lor said that he planned to meet with his clients to de­cide whether to ap­peal the de­ci­sion based on a case de­cid­ed, last month, in which High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered the Min­istry of Fi­nance to dis­close the spe­cif­ic sums of mon­ey paid to cred­i­tors since Gov­ern­ment’s $26 bil­lion bail-out.

He al­so not­ed that his clients were al­so cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing bring­ing a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the fail­ure of the Cen­tral Bank to re­lin­quish con­trol of CLF’s sub­sidiary Cli­co.

In a let­ter sent to Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hillar­ie, last month, Tay­lor quot­ed sev­er­al rel­a­tive­ly re­cent re­ports from the Cen­tral Bank, in which it stat­ed that it planned to give up con­trol of the bank af­ter it achieved a pos­i­tive net worth of over $600 mil­lion in De­cem­ber, last year.

NEVI­COTT’s in­volve­ment in the con­glom­er­ate be­gan last year when it ac­quired 5,878 shares in CLF from at­tor­ney David Han­nays.

The sale had to be ap­proved by Ram­cha­ran, who grant­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s move to put the group in liq­ui­da­tion in 2017 and ap­proved its joint liq­uida­tors.

NEVI­COTT has claimed that it has a fi­nan­cial arrange­ment with an in­vest­ment firm, reg­is­tered in the Cay­man Is­lands, to pro­vide US$ 2 bil­lion to clear the group’s re­main­ing debt to Gov­ern­ment.

In re­sponse to the ap­pli­ca­tion, the joint liq­uida­tors con­tend­ed that the court should not stop the sales as it would mean that the group may in­cur more le­gal li­a­bil­i­ty as the deal for the sale of the ho­tel was struck be­fore the chal­lenge was mount­ed.

The liq­uida­tors al­so ques­tioned the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to prove it has the fund­ing and are con­tend­ing that re­main­ing debt is more than twice what the com­pa­ny claims it has to in­ject.

NEVI­COTT was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Fe­lix Ce­les­tine.