(Trinidad Express) Strange commissions, exorbitant bonuses and significant weaknesses in internal controls were the order of the day at CL Financial, former group financial director, Michael Carballo, said yesterday.
Carballo made the statement as he gave evidence for the second day at the Commission of Enquiry into the collapse of CL Financial and the Hindu Credit Union (HCU) at the Winsure Building, Richmond Street, Port of Spain, yesterday.
“There were some weaknesses in internal controls, significant weaknesses in internal controls at CL Financial,” Carballo said .
“There were significant problems in terms of what we call proper segregation of duties, whereby the payee and the person approving the payment voucher under proper standards are supposed to be separate so you are supposed to have a segregation of duties so you do not have one paying themselves and this was highlighted when CL Financial had what it called a corporate oversight team,” he said.
“People were preparing vouchers and paying themselves, it is hard to control situations like this whereby we have Gita Sakal controlling all banking arrangements and paying herself,” Carballo said.
Sakal was the corporate secretary of CL Financial.
Carballo said a debit of US$5 million was made from CL Financial’s US dollar account at Royal Bank to pay Sakal’s consultancy firm, Corporate Consultants Ltd.
Sakal signed both the invoice and the bank instructions to have the funds debited, Carballo said.
CL chairman Lawrence Duprey was unaware of the US$5 million (TT$32.5m) payment to Sakal and ordered that the money be “immediately returned”, Carballo said.
Sakal was paid a US$35,000 monthly salary and was entitled to a US$2 million annual bonus, Carballo said.
Carballo said his immediate predecessor, Andre Monteil, also sought a US$2 million consultancy fee and TT$194 million in commissions to help CL Financial out of its financial troubles.
CL Financial’s board of directors was “outraged” that Monteil would seek such “exorbitant fee on the heels of the CL Financial seeking liquidity”, Carballo said.
Carballo also told the Commission of “strange” commissions being paid during the investment in real estate projects in Florida.
Carballo said a broker named Charles Pratt told him that he was paid US$85 million on the US$300 Green Island Project.
Carballo also questioned the project management of some of the real estate projects in Florida.
“It was only after I moved to CL Financial I realised how these projects were managed, it was via an entity called DYL,” Carballo said.
Carballo said DYL is an acronym for the surnames of Lawrence Duprey, John Yanopoulos and Geoffrey Leid.
“And again I wonder what is Geoffrey Leid’s involvement in this especially at a time when Geoffrey Leid is a director and company secretary of an insurance company called CLICO,” Carballo said.
