(Trinidad Express) Pertinent files containing information about the operations of the failed Hindu Credit Union (HCU), kept at the offices of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development, have gone missing.
This was disclosed yesterday as former commissioner for co-operative development Keith Maharajh took the witness stand at the Commission of Enquiry into the collapse of CL Financial and the HCU for the second successive day.
A special Saturday sitting of the enquiry was held at Winsure Building, Richmond Street, Port of Spain.
Maharajh said during his tenure there were several files related to the HCU that were kept at the office of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development.
He held the post of Commissioner for Co-operative Development from April 1995 to January 2006.
“There were several files, some files had to be closed because of the bulkiness. I would think that everything that went on with the commissioner’s office in relation to the HCU was contained in those files,” Maharajh said.
The difficulty in locating the information on the HCU was brought to the fore after several people subpoenaed by the enquiry requested documents from the office of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development which could not be found.
Senior Counsel Reginald Armour yesterday explained that the relocation of the office of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development over the years was in part to blame for the difficulty with the documents being located.
“That process (the relocation of the office of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development) has resulted very unfortunately in a physical dislocation of some of the documents which we continue to ask for and which have not as yet been found,” Armour said yesterday.
Armour leads the legal team representing the Commissioner for Co-operative Development at the enquiry.
Armour said the process in trying to find the documents is “still ongoing”.
Sir Anthony Colman, the lone commissioner in the enquiry, yesterday questioned how much “confidence” could be placed in the documents submitted so far as evidence in the enquiry.
“What level of confidence can this commission entertain that it has the complete set of relevant documents from the CCD’s (Commissioner for Co-operative Development) office?” Colman said.
“The answer must be an incomplete level of confidence and if so there must be presumably a real risk that there are other material documents still unfound and in the possession of the Commissioner (for Co-operative Development),” he said.
Armour said he believed a large portion of the relevant documents had already been found.
“Well I will answer it this way Sir Anthony, if you were to ask me on a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, what is the level of my confidence that the documentation is complete I would say I think we would ascribe a scale of somewhere around eight to nine,” Armour said.
“I will say and I say this quite deliberately because I am concerned with of course the fact that this is a public enquiry. I have no criticism of the effort being made by the office of the Commissioner (for Co-operative Development), which I represent, to unearth and to lay their hands on all of the documents which they can conceivably lay their hands on,” he said.
“The fact that the physical compilation that is before your commission is less than complete certainly I will not attribute to a lack of effort of the office of the Commissioner.”
Queen’s Counsel Edwin Glasgow, counsel to the enquiry, described the difficulty in finding the documents as “very surprising and very unsatisfactory”.
Maharajh said during his tenure there was “no security” for the files at the office of the Commissioner for Co-operative Development.
Maharajh said when he demitted office in 2006, he did not take a “single piece of paper” and even left his “memories of the place” because he had terrible experiences there.
On Friday Maharajh was chided for having a lax attitude towards numerous letters sent to his office about the HCU under Harry Harnarine’s stewardship.
In contrast Glasgow yesterday read several letters in the enquiry which were signed by Maharajh that called for requests from the HCU, including a $30 million increase in their overdraft facility, be handled “ASAP (as soon as possible)”.
Maharajh yesterday denied being friends with former HCU president Harnarine but admitted that unlike testimony received by other witnesses, he never received any death threats from Harnarine.
Maharajh was not cross examined by Harnarine’s attorney Farid Scoon.
