Raphael John-Lall

"Un­be­liev­able" is how con­sul­tant and so­cial com­men­ta­tor Afra Ray­mond yes­ter­day de­scribed the state­ments of for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey, re­port­ed in the last Sun­day Guardian that he "doesn't have one cent."

How­ev­er, last year in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co, Cli­co at­tor­ney Neal Bis­nath said Duprey was paid $90 mil­lion a year from the de­posits of pol­i­cy­hold­ers.

Ray­mond said Duprey's com­ment about the state of his fi­nances rais­es a few points.

"We need to see the con­sol­i­dat­ed ac­counts but this has been made se­cret. Al­so, we need to see a list of who got back mon­ey as that list would show a who's who of who are in­volved. We al­so need to see who have de­fault­ed on their loans. We would be able to draw a map from these de­tails," he told the Guardian yes­ter­day.

He al­so re­ferred to re­marks from sole com­mis­sion­er, Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, who is re­port­ed to have said that Duprey in­formed the Com­mis­sion that he could not at­tend the En­quiry be­cause of ill­ness. "Col­man al­so spoke about three for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters who did not at­tend. I think there is some­thing sin­is­ter go­ing on," he said.

Pe­ter Per­me­ll, chair­man of th Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group (CPG) called Duprey's state­ment a "rant." "This re­cent rant of Mr Duprey is just the lat­est in a se­ries of in­ex­plic­a­ble and bizarre pub­lic ut­ter­ances that he has made with­in the past few weeks.

"First there was the 'I did noth­ing wrong,' then there was the 'at all times, I sought the best in­ter­ests of the com­pa­ny so that the ben­e­fits de­rived would re­dound to the pol­i­cy­hold­ers, share­hold­ers and em­ploy­ees.' "Then there was the 'my health is not as ro­bust as it used to be and I am not able to spend hours con­cen­trat­ing with­out be­com­ing tired and for­get­ful.' "Then the 'this has been a life-chang­ing and very shock­ing pe­ri­od for me since Jan­u­ary 2009 and I have tak­en it all very bad­ly,' and now this 'I am broke' de­c­la­ra­tion."

Per­me­ll said the cit­i­zens of T&T are not stu­pid. "In fact wher­ev­er I go, peo­ple are meet­ing in the malls, at the gro­cery, in the park­ing lots and ask­ing me: 'What is re­al­ly go­ing on here?' It just does not make sense. Is this some sort or so­phis­ti­cat­ed ploy by the bil­lion­aire and for­mer CLF Chair­man to ei­ther elic­it pub­lic sym­pa­thy or craft a claim some­where down the road of di­min­ished ca­pac­i­ty or both?" he asked.

He al­so said Duprey is con­tra­dict­ing him­self.

"In light of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion's (DPP) re­cent warn­ing, my re­sponse is in­vari­ably no com­ment! And by the way didn't Mr Duprey say he is a phil­an­thropist? "By de­f­i­n­i­tion isn't a phil­an­thropist usu­al­ly some­one, with a lot of mon­ey, who gives it away in the form of char­i­ty for the good of mankind or hu­man­i­tar­i­an pur­pos­es, so that it seems to me that a 'broke phil­an­thropist' would not on­ly be a first it would in­deed be bit of an oxy­moron," he said.

Per­cy Far­rell, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Per­cy Far­rell Group of Pol­i­cy­hold­ers said he does not know the de­tails of Duprey's fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and would not want to com­ment. "I do not know about his fi­nances and I do not know if he is broke, but I can tell you that I am broke," he said.