TT$1B of CLICO depositors money diverted – attorney

(Trinidad Express) Over one billion dollars that should have been returned to CLICO depositors as a result of their shareholding in Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd (MHTL) was instead diverted away to other companies.

So said Queen’s Counsel Andrew Mitchell as he cross-examined Rampersad Motilal, chief executive officer of MHTL, yesterday.

“The total dividend declared for the period 2006-2010 for the benefit of CLF/ CLICO was over US$210 million and that equates to about $1.25 billion Trinidad and Tobago dollars,” Mitchell, the legal representative for former CL Financial chairman Lawrence Duprey, said yesterday.

CLICO had a 49 per cent shareholding in MHTL while CL Financial had a 7 per cent share ownership, Motilal said.

When it was time for dividend payments, however, correspondence was sent to MHTL asking for the funds to be diverted to other companies.

Sir Anthony Colman, the lone commissioner in the Commission of Enquiry, had referred to this policy as “a pretty incomprehensible agreement”.

Motilal yesterday spent his second day on the witness stand at the Commission of Enquiry held at the Winsure Building, Richmond Street in Port of Spain.

Motilal served on the CLF board of directors from 2005 to 2009.

He said during his tenure on the CLF board he knew there were many challenges but Duprey tried his best to correct the deficiencies.

“While I agree we were all searching to improve and continuously improve the systems I agree the chairman (Duprey) spent many sleepless nights trying to cajole his subordinates and subsidiaries to report on time,” Motilal said.

“The difficulty that I saw with an executive chairman who was also a shareholder you have a situation where executives, CEOs or senior executives tend to bypass the Board because they would go directly to the executive chairman instead of go to the board for decision making,” he said.

Colman yesterday ruled that the source of remunerations for directors and other main “actors” in the Commission of Enquiry but said that quantifying the amount would be “too collateral an issue”.