(Trinidad Express) Former CL Financial chairman Lawrence Duprey was a visionary whose downfall was that he had “incompetent” managers working under him.
This claim was made yesterday by Rajiv Persad, one of the attorneys representing Duprey in the Commission of Enquiry into the collapse of CL Financial and the Hindu Credit Union as he cross-examined Michael Carballo, former group financial director of CL Financial at the enquiry held at the Winsure Building, Richmond Street, Port of Spain.
Duprey was a “big picture man” who was “willing to give up an accounting loss in favour of building and developing an international brand”, Persad said.
“Yes, he was willing to forego accounting losses for the benefit of the long term,” Carballo said.
“At the end of the day CL Financial did not really have the depth of management to ensure that after the acquisitions were made to put managers in place to work at the various entities,”Carballo said.
For six straight years CL Financial and Duprey called for subsidiaries to file their financial statements on time, Persad said.
In response to this, Carballo said, “corporate governance was spoken but not implemented”.
He said this lack of implementation was based on a “lack of will and motivation on behalf of the managers”.
Persad also came to the defence of Arnaud De Trabuc, Duprey’s primary commercial adviser, whom Carballo is his previous testimony had called a “loose character” who had been previously arrested for fraud.
“Merely because a person is convicted does not mean they are damned for life,” Persad said.
During earlier testimony, Carballo called on attorneys Geoffrey Leid and Ian Anthony to be taken before the Law Association’s disciplinary committee.
Persad said Carballo should be taken before the professional body of accountants for his role in “financially engineering a loan structure” between Angostura and CLICO, which “was the straw that broke the camel’s back in CL Financial’s fight for survival”.
“If they want to investigate me they can, my professional integrity is intact,” Carballo said.
