Colm Im­bert

I have tak­en note of an ar­ti­cle in your Busi­ness Guardian Edi­tion of Oc­to­ber 10, 2024, in which an in­di­vid­ual named Carl­ton Reis in­di­cat­ed that his com­pa­ny has a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in CL Fi­nan­cial and in which he im­plied that the Gov­ern­ment did not “res­cue” CL Fi­nan­cial in 2009.

In this let­ter to the ed­i­tor, which fol­lows a fa­mil­iar pat­tern of ir­re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism, where your news­pa­per does not fact-check con­tro­ver­sial and ob­vi­ous­ly in­ac­cu­rate al­le­ga­tions made by in­ter­est­ed par­ties, Reis claimed that he did “not re­call a sin­gle in­stance when ei­ther the Cen­tral Bank or the Min­istry of Fi­nance in­di­cat­ed that CL Fi­nan­cial was be­ing res­cued” and fol­low­ing this ad­mis­sion of what can on­ly be poor mem­o­ry re­call on his part, he went on to ques­tion my state­ment in the 2025 Bud­get State­ment that CL Fi­nan­cial still owes the Gov­ern­ment bil­lions of dol­lars for what is com­mon­ly known as the “Cli­co Bailout”.

If Reis is cor­rect, then why did the High Court agree to CL Fi­nan­cial’s liq­ui­da­tion in 2017? Ob­vi­ous­ly, the Court was then, and still is, of the view that CL Fi­nan­cial owes the Gov­ern­ment sub­stan­tial sums of mon­ey. The Liq­uida­tor is al­so of that view.

Even the Privy Coun­cil is aware that the Gov­ern­ment bailed out CL Fi­nan­cial in 2009 and in a re­cent press re­lease about an ap­peal over the Liq­uida­tor’s fees in this mat­ter, the Privy Coun­cil stat­ed as fol­lows: “In or around 2009, the ap­pel­lant (CL Fi­nan­cial) raised con­cerns with the gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go about its fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and the sys­temic risk those dif­fi­cul­ties posed to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider re­gion in which it op­er­at­ed. The gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed a “bail out” to the ap­pel­lant (CL Fi­nan­cial)...”

Fur­ther, a de­ci­sion over a claim aris­ing from the bailout of CL Fi­nan­cial and its sub­sidiaries is cur­rent­ly pend­ing in the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice. Cit­i­zens from oth­er Caribbean coun­tries who suf­fered as a re­sult of CL Fi­nan­cial’s col­lapse are de­mand­ing equal treat­ment from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and de­mand­ing mon­ey from Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­sult of bailout by the Gov­ern­ment of CL Fi­nan­cial.

In that case, all in­volved, in­clud­ing the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, are aware, that “in 2009 the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­cid­ed to bail out CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) and its lo­cal sub­sidiaries...”.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Reis ap­pears obliv­i­ous to the terms of the June 2009 MOU be­tween CL Fi­nan­cial and the Gov­ern­ment, where CL Fi­nan­cial un­der­took to re­pay the Gov­ern­ment all sums in­vest­ed and ex­pend­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to “res­cue” CL Fi­nan­cial from its fi­nan­cial prob­lems at the time.

It is un­for­tu­nate that the Guardian would pub­lish Reis’ high­ly in­ac­cu­rate ver­sion of events with­out check­ing the ve­rac­i­ty of his as­ton­ish­ing claims.

The whole world knows that the Gov­ern­ment bailed out CL Fi­nan­cial in its en­tire­ty in 2009, and not mere­ly some of its sub­sidiaries.

The ir­re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism in this mat­ter, where on­ly one patent­ly in­ac­cu­rate side of a sto­ry is pub­lished with­out re­but­tal or fact-check­ing, is sim­i­lar to the re­peat­ed pub­li­ca­tion of high­ly in­ac­cu­rate and base­less al­le­ga­tions made by an en­ti­ty call­ing it­self the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group, led by an in­di­vid­ual who sold his poli­cies, in full and fi­nal set­tle­ment, to a pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment and re­lin­quished all his rights to any fur­ther pay­ment from Cli­co many years ago. That in­di­vid­ual has not, in all those years, tak­en any le­gal ac­tion against Cli­co for his al­leged claim of fur­ther en­ti­tle­ment be­cause his chances of suc­cess would be al­most ze­ro. Yet the in­di­vid­ual’s base­less claims, pub­licly de­bunked sev­en years ago, are giv­en promi­nence by your pa­per every oth­er month with­out any fact-check­ing.

In con­trast, when a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, like my­self, makes a state­ment backed up by fac­tu­al ev­i­dence, your news­pa­per rush­es to in­ter­view every bi­ased com­men­ta­tor it can find to con­tra­dict the Min­is­ter, usu­al­ly with­out both­er­ing to check the fac­tu­al ba­sis of the bi­ased and neg­a­tive com­men­tary in op­po­si­tion to the Min­is­ter’s state­ments.