(Trinidad Express) Finance Minister Winston Dookeran says the Government is seeking to claim some TT$20 billion from CL Financial (CLF).
He told the Sunday Express the Government has put in a claim to CL Financial before the expiration of the Shareholders Agreement in three weeks’ time.
While the claim is an estimated TT$20 billion, the net amount would be around TT$10 billion, he explained in a telephone interview yesterday.
He did not commit to exact figures and CL Financial’s ability, at present, to meet the Government’s demands.
At the moment, he said the Ministry was being advised by a team of lawyers from the United Kingdom on how it negotiates with CL Financial moving forward.
“Things are happening. I don’t know how much I can make public,” he told the Sunday Express yesterday.
The Shareholders Agreement which was signed on June 12, 2009, succeeded the Memorandum of Understanding of January 30, 2009 signed between the Government, CLF and the Central Bank.
The Shareholders Agreement allows the Government to have controlling interest of the CL Financial board.
Government appointed directors on the CL Financial board include former Citibank executive Steve Bideshi, Krishna Boodhai and Marlon Holder while former finance minister Gerald Yetming is chairman of both CL Financial and CLICO. Steve Castagne and Andrew Mitchell, QC were voted on the board by the shareholders.
It was Government’s guarantee for a return on its bailout of Lawrence Duprey’s companies that made up CL Financial.
The lawyers, explained Dookeran, will negotiate with a limited liability company called United Shareholders Ltd (USL) which is comprised of CL Financial shareholders.
The establishment of USL, by Kirk Carpenter and Roger Duprey, was agreed to by CL Financial shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting held on May 16.
A resolution was also passed for the CL Financial board to form a shareholders’ sub-committee, consisting of individuals appointed by USL.
That committee, it was reported, shall have the authority to negotiate and recommend to the CL Financial board any agreement, consent, extension or any other documentation supplemental to or derived from the Memorandum of Understanding of January 30, 2009 and the Shareholders’ Agreement of June 12, 2009.
For years, CL Financial was a billion-dollar enterprise. Three years ago, Duprey went to the government after his empire, which comprised some 65 companies in 32 countries, was caught up in a perfect storm of economic collapse.
Its asset-rich portfolio cloaked its cash-poor balance sheets.
Government’s intervention saw the revocation of subsidiary Clico Investment Bank’s licence, installing of new boards at CLICO and eventually CL Financial and immediate liquidity injection to meet investment annuities which had matured.
CL Financial chairman Gerald Yetming is currently in London to take part in arbitration proceedings brought against the Government by foreign holdings company Consolidated Energy Ltd for its shareholding of Methanol Holdings Trinidad Ltd.
To date, Government has transferred TT$8.2 billion in cash and bonds to the CLICO policyholders and has spent an estimated TT$17 billion on CL Financial and its subsidiaries.
