Gail Alexan­der

It was the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion which had passed leg­is­la­tion in 2009 em­pow­er­ing Cen­tral Bank to take ac­tion in mat­ters like the Cli­co is­sue, go­ing af­ter je­fes Lawrence Duprey and for­mer PNM trea­sur­er An­dre Mon­teil, says for­mer PNM chair­man Con­rad Enill. The Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co on Tues­day filed civ­il pro­ceed­ings against for­mer Cli­co chair­man Duprey and for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tive Mon­teil, aris­ing out of the fail­ure of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2009. The bank has al­leged mis­man­age­ment of Cli­co and mis­ap­pli­ca­tion and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of its in­come and as­sets to the detri­ment of its pol­i­cy­hold­ers and mu­tu­al fund in­vestors.

The ac­tion names Dal­co Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd and Stone Street Cap­i­tal Ltd, two pri­vate com­pa­nies held by Duprey and Mon­teil per­son­al­ly. For­mer Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank chair­man, Mon­teil, is al­ready be­fore the courts re­gard­ing ac­tion brought by CIB in­ter­im chair­man Carl Hi­rar­al (In­spec­tor of Banks) seek­ing to re­cov­er $110 mil­lion as a re­sult of a 2007 loan by Mon­teil. For­mer PNM chair­man Enill, who was al­so a past PNM Fi­nance Min­is­ter, had served on the PNM's last ex­ec­u­tive, along­side Mon­teil, who had be­come PNM trea­sur­er in 2005, fol­low­ing the death of An­tho­ny Jacelon. Enill not­ed that Mon­teil had re­signed as PNM trea­sur­er in 2008 when Mon­teil re­tired from pub­lic life and var­i­ous State boards.

The res­ig­na­tion fol­lowed pub­lic pres­sure which arose when Mon­teil, who was HMB chair­man, had ac­quired $110 mil­lion worth of HMB shares in a mat­ter in which Stone Street Cap­i­tal al­so had fig­ured.

Though cleared on the HMB is­sue by a Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC) re­port, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in par­lia­men­tary state­ments had sharply dis­tanced him­self and his Gov­ern­ment from Mon­teil's ac­tion which was re­ferred to the DPP and In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for probe.

A po­lice probe al­so or­dered on the HMB is­sue, was opened-end­ed up to 2008. Yes­ter­day Enill said the past ad­min­is­tra­tion had sought to tight­en the law and em­pow­er the Cen­tral Bank fur­ther af­ter the Cli­co melt­down oc­curred in 2009. He said the Cen­tral Bank Amend­ment Act was pi­lot­ed in the Par­lia­ment by then Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira.

He said Cen­tral Bank's ad­di­tion­al pow­er gave it the ju­ris­dic­tion to ex­am­ine in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­cate if they were man­aged prop­er­ly and if not, de­cide on steps to deal with that, in­clud­ing im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion. In that re­gard, Enill said, Gov­ern­ment's ju­ris­dic­tion end­ed at a point and the bank as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for such in­sti­tu­tions. Enill added: "The past ad­min­is­tra­tion had to ne­go­ti­ate with the Op­po­si­tion for a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty on the bill which em­pow­ered the bank to rein in con­ta­gion and take ac­tion on mat­ters such as the Cli­co sit­u­a­tion." He said Mon­teil's cur­rent court is­sues did not cause any re­flec­tion on the par­ty since Mon­teil had re­signed as PNM trea­sur­er since 2008.