Pe­ter D Nep­tune

Gov­ern­ment is de­ter­mined to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion and will pros­e­cute high-lev­el em­ploy­ees if wrong­do­ing is re­vealed in the foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate CL Fi­nan­cial, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira.

Tesheira gave the as­sur­ance at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. She said she pre­pared a note last week to Cab­i­net to con­sid­er a re­port and an up­date on the process. "Af­ter Cab­i­net had con­sid­ered the up­date, I will be com­ing to the pop­u­la­tion with the new chair­man of Cli­co, CL Fi­nan­cial and pos­si­bly the Cen­tral Bank to ap­praise the pop­u­la­tion on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and fu­ture plans for the or­gan­i­sa­tion," she said. In re­sponse to ques­tions about the ap­point­ment of Gi­ta Sakal as the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary at Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd, a sub­sidiary of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group, and oth­er for­mer ex­ec­u­tives in­volved in run­ning the con­glom­er­ate lead­ing up to gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion, Tesheira gave the as­sur­ance Gov­ern­ment would pur­sue the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion if the in­ves­ti­ga­tion de­ter­mined ex­ec­u­tives or em­ploy­ees of the com­pa­ny act­ed in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

Sakal is the for­mer cor­po­rate sec­re­tary at CL Fi­nan­cial. She added: "This is a com­pli­cat­ed process, so we do not have a time­frame for com­plet­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. "How­ev­er, we want to en­sure the pop­u­la­tion that we are tak­ing the time to com­plete the in­ves­ti­ga­tion thor­ough­ly so when we de­cide to pros­e­cute, we will have the ev­i­dence to back up what we are say­ing in court." She said Gov­ern­ment al­ready had spent $2 bil­lion, and count­ing, on cor­po­rate re­struc­tur­ing and pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port for CL Fi­nan­cial since the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate col­lapsed in late Jan­u­ary 2009. The min­is­ter said the foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors and the new ex­ec­u­tive have been work­ing on sort­ing out and un­rav­el­ling the in­ter-re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial arrange­ments be­tween the var­i­ous com­pa­nies in the group and it was tak­ing time for the team to com­plete the process.

She said apart from de­pos­i­tors and in­vestors, tax­pay­ers' mon­ey al­so had been in­volved in the bail-out and it was im­por­tant to re­lease the in­for­ma­tion and Gov­ern­ment's plan for deal­ing with the com­pa­ny's fu­ture. Tesheira said that ac­tion was against the law, par­tic­u­lar­ly since CL Fi­nan­cial was a pri­vate com­pa­ny and si­phon­ing funds out of the in­sur­ance, pen­sions and de­pos­i­tors' funds was not al­lowed by law. She said apart from Gov­ern­ment re­al­is­ing it was ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide the fund­ing to deal with the liq­uid­i­ty sit­u­a­tion fac­ing CL Fi­nan­cial, "it was al­so im­por­tant to change the laws ur­gent­ly in Feb­ru­ary last year to close those loop­holes or pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sanc­tions to pre­vent these types of things from hap­pen­ing again in the fu­ture."