Asha Javeed

All CL Fi­nan­cial's ex­ec­u­tives "were try­ing to make a buck for them­selves," said for­mer Group Fi­nance Head Michael Car­ballo as he con­clud­ed his 91 page wit­ness state­ment which cov­ered two days at the third sit­ting of the Com­mis­son of En­quiry in­to Cli­co and Hin­du Cred­it Union yes­ter­day.Car­ballo's con­clu­sion came for a se­ries of "self-serv­ing, self-deal­ing and self-in­ter­est" ma­noeu­vres made by top CL ex­ec­u­tives af­ter the com­pa­ny, un­der liq­uid­i­ty pres­sure, went to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for help in Ju­ly 2009.He lament­ed that ex­ec­u­tives who "thrived on the loose gov­ern­ing stan­dards" of CLF did not have the com­pa­ny's best in­ter­est at heart.Among those Car­ballo iden­ti­fied are:

1. An­dre Mon­teil- Car­ballo's pre­de­ces­sor, whose ad­vice the Group fre­quent­ly "leaned on" stepped in dur­ing CLF talks with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T be­cause of his po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions. "Lawrence said he want­ed Mon­teil in­volved in the so­lu­tion and he want­ed every­one else to take a back seat. I was tak­en aback. Ram Ramesh was tak­en aback," said Car­ballo.He told the COE that Mon­teil had en­gi­neered a plan to sell CLF's 54 per cent share­hold­ing in Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed at above mar­ket rate at $130 a share. With some 88 mil­lion in shares the deal would have se­cured the illiq­uid CLF group about $12 bil­lion. Mon­teil's Stone Street would have earned a 0.5 per cent com­mis­sion val­ued at $60 mil­lion.The CLF board sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed this pro­pos­al.But not be­fore Mon­teil earned US$750,000 for his con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices in ne­go­ti­at­ing the MOU.

2. Gi­ta Sakal-CLF's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary who sought a US$5 mil­lion bonus fol­low­ing her res­ig­na­tion from the com­pa­ny. Car­ballo told the COE, that Sakal's con­tract would have end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2011 but pri­or to her break­ing it, she au­tho­rised a with­draw­al from CLF's Roy­al Bank US ac­count for the sum of US$5 mil­lion. That sum, ac­cord­ing to the ex­plana­to­ry let­ter, was to be paid to her com­pa­ny, Cor­po­rate Con­sul­tan­cy Lim­it­ed.This, said Car­ballo, was done in March 2009 in prepa­ra­tion for her res­ig­na­tion. Car­ballo said Duprey nev­er au­tho­rised such a pay­ment and fur­ther, fol­low­ing the MOU, the chair­man had said no bonus­es were to be paid to CL ex­ec­u­tives. Sakal's con­tract pro­vid­ed for a $2 mil­lion an­nu­al bonus.

3. Ian An­tho­ny-Car­ballo ex­plained that at­tor­ney-at-law An­tho­ny was brought from abroad by Duprey to re-ne­go­ti­ate the MOU with the T&T Gov­ern­ment to the Share­hold­ers Agree­ment. This, he said, af­ford­ed An­tho­ny in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the com­pa­ny's op­er­a­tions. He said in June 2009, An­tho­ny sought to get Duprey's sig­na­ture on a let­ter in Mi­a­mi air­port, which would have ap­point­ed him­self an agent for the sale of cer­tain CLF as­sets. A vis­i­bly irate Car­ballo called on the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to in­ves­ti­gate An­tho­ny's ethics in re­la­tion to this mat­ter.

4. Ge­of­fery Leid-Car­ballo ex­plained that Leid, who was a di­rec­tor and com­pa­ny sec­re­tary at Cli­co, formed part of a DYL con­sor­tium-Duprey, Yanapo­lis and Leid.DYL, Car­ballo told the COE, was do­ing project man­age­ment work for a num­ber of Cli­co's re­al es­tate in­vest­ments in Flori­da.Car­ballo ques­tioned how DYL, which is a pri­vate com­pa­ny in which Leid is a pri­ma­ry share­hold­er, charged project man­age­ment fees to Cli­co which were read­i­ly paid and in ex­cess of gen­er­at­ed mar­ket rates. He al­so called on the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to look in­to Leid's eth­i­cal con­duct.

5. Cli­co En­er­gy Lim­it­ed-the sale of an as­set val­ued at over US$200 mil­lion for a mere $46.5 mil­lion to Pro­man Hold­ings around Feb­ru­ary 4, 2010, an­gered Car­ballo, as it was done with the knowl­edge of three peo­ple-Sakal, Duprey and CLF di­rec­tor Ram­per­sad Moti­lal. Car­ballo said he could not un­der­stand why such a prof­itable en­ti­ty was un­der­val­ued and sold with­out the CLF board's knowl­edge, save three, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.He said one bro­ker, Charles Pratt, made a US$85 mil­lion com­mis­sion af­ter he ne­go­ti­at­ed the sale of Flori­da-based Green Is­land for US$300 mil­lion to British Amer­i­can.

At the Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, Car­ballo said, sig­na­ture bonus­es were paid to the ex­ec­u­tive of CIB and com­mis­sions were paid on book­ing a loan.He ex­plained that de­spite Duprey's agree­ment to cease con­duct­ing deals af­ter the am­bi­tious ac­qui­si­tion of Las­celles de Mer­ca­do, he agreed to buy out Ja­maica Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers' 49 per cent share­hold­ing of CMMB for US$42 mil­lion. That arrange­ment, he said, nev­er came be­fore the CLF board and al­so in­creased CLF's debt to its sub­sidiary CMMB.De­spite the com­pa­ny's in­ter­nal feed­ing, Car­ballo said when word got out of liq­uid­i­ty prob­lems be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the Group, from the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2008 to Jan­u­ary 2010, the CL Group of com­pa­nies paid $700 mil­lion to some big de­pos­i­tors- Caribbean Air­lines, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, a few wealthy EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers.Car­ballo lament­ed that while Duprey was a "very unique in­di­vid­ual" and hav­ing an in­sa­tiable risk ap­petite, he lacked an hon­est core-team of ex­ec­u­tives and ad­vi­sors.