The Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) and Cli­co’s cur­rent man­age­ment have de­cid­ed to with­draw a law­suit over the col­lapse of the for­mer in­sur­ance gi­ant. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co made the pro­pos­al in cor­re­spon­dence sent to lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the com­pa­ny’s de­ceased for­mer chair­man Lawrence Duprey, his com­pa­ny Dal­co Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd,  for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) ex­ec­u­tive An­dre Mon­teil, his com­pa­ny Stone Street Cap­i­tal, and for­mer CLF cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gi­ta Sakal. 

The de­ci­sion comes a week af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, an­nounced plans to end civ­il lit­i­ga­tion over the col­lapse of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny and CLF. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co, re­ferred to the Sir An­tho­ny Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port in­to the fail­ure of the com­pa­nies, which was laid in Par­lia­ment by Je­re­mie, last week Fri­day.

“You would be aware that the Col­man Re­port con­tains un­equiv­o­cal find­ings of fault for the fail­ure of Cli­co and oth­ers, in a man­ner which leaves no doubt that the fil­ing of this claim by the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co was jus­ti­fied and in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” the at­tor­ney said. 

De­spite her po­si­tion on the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the case, the at­tor­ney not­ed that the with­draw­al was based on her clients’ in­struc­tions. 

“In light of the Col­man Com­mis­sion’s find­ings and in an ef­fort to save fur­ther time and cost on these mat­ters, we have been in­struct­ed by our clients to with­draw this claim and pro­pose that the claimants be per­mit­ted to do so with each par­ty bear­ing its own costs,” she said. 

The de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed, who is pre­sid­ing over the case, when it comes up for hear­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day morn­ing. 

The law­suit was seek­ing to hold the group of for­mer ex­ec­u­tives li­able for de­ci­sions which al­leged­ly led to the col­lapse of the com­pa­ny and a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar gov­ern­ment bail-out and takeover in 2009. They were ac­cused of mis­man­ag­ing the com­pa­ny by mis­ap­ply­ing and mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing the com­pa­ny’s in­come and as­sets to the detri­ment of pol­i­cy­hold­ers and in­vestors. 

Through the law­suit, filed in 2011, the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co were seek­ing dam­ages and resti­tu­tion for the loss­es suf­fered by the com­pa­ny dur­ing the group’s tenure.

Since the tri­al com­menced ear­li­er this month, lawyers for the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co led the ev­i­dence of two wit­ness­es—for­mer cen­tral bank gov­er­nor Ewart Williams and the bank’s Man­ag­er of In­sur­ance Na­tal­ie Roopchands­ingh. 

Williams gave ev­i­dence and was cross-ex­am­ined by the le­gal teams for all the de­fen­dants. When an ad­journ­ment was sought to mull over the fu­ture of the case ear­li­er this week, Roopchands­ingh was in the process of be­ing cross-ex­am­ined over her ev­i­dence.

Af­ter the CoE com­plet­ed its work and pro­duced its re­port in June 2016, the re­port was not made pub­lic but was in­stead sent to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal charges could be pur­sued. 

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, last Fri­day, Je­re­mie re­vealed that the State had in­curred be­tween $3 to $4 bil­lion in le­gal, ac­count­ing, and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs in ad­di­tion to the ap­prox­i­mate­ly $28 bil­lion that was ex­pend­ed to bailout CLF and Cli­co. 

He said that the State could no longer jus­ti­fy con­tin­u­ing ex­pen­sive lit­i­ga­tion that has not pro­duced mean­ing­ful re­sults. 

While Je­re­mie not­ed that crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings are with­in the DPP’s purview and the fi­nance min­is­ter has over­sight over the Cen­tral Bank, he not­ed that he had the pow­er to end civ­il pro­ceed­ings to en­sure that ad­di­tion­al tax­pay­ers’ funds are not en­gaged. 

“I can, how­ev­er, end civ­il pro­ceed­ings. And I pro­posed to do so now, in a cost-ef­fec­tive man­ner, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that the State has com­menced some of these pro­ceed­ings and might be re­quired to meet some rea­son­able cost to ex­it the pro­ceed­ings,” Je­re­mie said.