Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego/Mar­tin North East Colm Im­bert has called on the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to come clean on whether plans are on stream to ac­cept the US$3 bil­lion pro­pos­al from a Hong Kong firm to set­tle all CL Fi­nan­cial out­stand­ing debts. Im­bert raised the is­sue in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, ques­tion­ing why the pro­pos­al has not been ac­cept­ed giv­en that the firm was not ask­ing for any Gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee. The MP said if the pro­pos­al was ac­cept­ed, bil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­ers' monies would be saved. Im­bert said: "A hold­ing com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ing a num­ber of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tutes has pro­posed to Gov­ern­ment that it would fund the re­fi­nance of CL Fi­nan­cial to the tune of US$3 bil­lion, re­store share­hold­ers and ne­go­ti­ate and fi­nalise the pay­out of all third par­ty claims; sat­is­fy the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions of the de­pos­i­tors of CIB; meet the statu­to­ry re­quire­ment of all agen­cies and re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence. It al­lows all pol­i­cy hold­ers to be re­paid. Why aren't you pur­su­ing it?"

But not want­i­ng to di­vulge too much on the mat­ter, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said the chair­man of Cli­co and the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor were at present look­ing at the pro­pos­al. Dook­er­an said Gov­ern­ment not­ed the needs of all pol­i­cy hold­ers and is com­mit­ted to look­ing at in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions. The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said apart from the $75,000 pay­out plan, a Com­pas­sion­ate Re­lief Ben­e­fit has been set up to as­sist pol­i­cy hold­ers in emer­gency cas­es. In such cas­es, Dook­er­an said, pol­i­cy hold­ers can ac­cess up to $250,000 once the rel­e­vant re­quire­ments are met. A two-year plan is on stream to fa­cil­i­tate pol­i­cy hold­ers of cred­it and trade unions via liq­uid­i­ty sup­port. He is urg­ing pol­i­cy hold­ers to re­frain from tak­ing le­gal ac­tion which can pose a chal­lenge and de­lay with re­spect to pay­outs.