Asha Javeed

"Would you now shut up?" was the sharp re­buke from Cli­co in­quiry chair­man Sir An­tho­ny Col­man to Mar­tin Daly, SC, yes­ter­day. Daly, at­tor­ney for An­dre Mon­teil, was de­mand­ing ev­i­dence from chief CL Fi­nan­cial wit­ness Michael Car­ballo that he had dis­sent­ed to Mon­teil's com­pa­ny act­ing on be­half of CLF in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. Car­ballo said ev­i­dence was found in the CLF's board dis­ap­proval in the board min­utes of Jan­u­ary 31. As both Car­ballo and Daly raised their voic­es and sought to get their per­spec­tives across, Com­mis­sion­er Col­man in­ter­vened. "I've asked a ques­tion. Would you now shut up?" Col­man told Daly. Car­ballo main­tained that the board min­utes record­ed the dis­sent of the CLF di­rec­tors.

"It was a row?" asked Col­man. "Yes," re­spond­ed Car­ballo. "I think we've squeezed that lemon dry now," Col­man said, as he di­rect­ed Daly to en­gage in a dif­fer­ent line of ques­tion­ing. But Daly wasn't so eas­i­ly dis­suad­ed.

As he sought to de­fend his "im­pli­cat­ed" par­ty, Daly lost pa­tience with in­dul­gences as he "can't be as cour­te­ous as the com­mis­sion­er and my learned friends" and in­stead pro­ceed­ed to at­tack Car­ballo's cred­i­bil­i­ty and his wit­ness state­ment which he claimed was di­rect­ed sole­ly at his client. "I am fight­ing for the pro­tec­tion of my client who has been mau­vais langued left, right and cen­tre," Daly said. But Daly's de­fence, which ranged from cour­tesy to an out­right shout­ing match with Car­ballo, was cur­tailed by Col­man in many in­stances who point­ed out that he need­ed to move to an­oth­er top­ic or to al­low the wit­ness to an­swer. At one point, Daly even com­ment­ed: "I am hear­ing a lot of noise from in­de­pen­dent coun­sel." In a promised six-hour cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, of which on­ly three hours and 30 min­utes were com­plet­ed yes­ter­day, Daly charged that Car­ballo was jeal­ous of Mon­teil. "Why would I be jeal­ous of Mr Mon­teil?" asked Car­ballo.

"Be­cause he get the big work and you didn't get it. Ask me a stu­pid ques­tion and get a stu­pid an­swer," he glibly re­spond­ed. Car­ballo told the com­mis­sion that he was up­set at Duprey's choice of Mon­teil as lead per­son in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

Daly ac­cused Car­ballo of telling two lies to the com­mis­sion.

1. That he nev­er signed a let­ter, as a CLF di­rec­tor, giv­ing Mon­teil ap­proval to ne­go­ti­ate the sales of CLF's Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) shares. For his part, Car­ballo-who'd said he was "ve­he­ment­ly op­posed" to the let­ter- said it he'd signed it out of ex­pe­di­en­cy to de­ter­mine if it was re­al. The let­ter al­lowed Mon­teil to ne­go­ti­ate a sale for RBL shares at above mar­ket rates at $130 a share to which he would earn a 0.5 per cent com­mis­sion.

2. That he'd sign his wit­ness state­ment claim­ing it was true when the truth lay with the an­no­ta­tions he made to the wit­ness state­ment. And as he sought to ma­noeu­vre Car­ballo in­to an area in his 91-page wit­ness state­ment where he talked about Mon­teil's ac­qui­si­tion of Fla­vorite, he ac­cused Car­ballo of not do­ing his home­work be­fore he made charges against in­di­vid­u­als.

Car­ballo said para­graph 257 of his wit­ness state­ment was put in be­cause he was deal­ing with CLF funds. "You are at­tempt­ing to bring my client in­to odi­um and I am en­ti­tled to at­tack your cred­i­bil­i­ty," charged Daly. When com­mis­sion coun­sel Pe­ter Carter, QC, in­ter­ject­ed, Daly re­marked: "Is Mr Carter giv­ing ev­i­dence? I thought he would have dis­owned this." "I apol­o­gise if it has been set­tled, I am hap­py for the fam­i­ly," said Car­ballo. "Can I ac­cept an un­qual­i­fied apol­o­gy?" ques­tioned Daly. Daly cap­i­talised on Car­ballo's apol­o­gy by ques­tion­ing how he came to pro­duce his wit­ness state­ment. Car­ballo ex­plained that he was sum­moned by the com­mis­sion and a num­ber of doc­u­ments was pre­sent­ed to him which he had to com­ment on. Fur­ther, he was asked to fur­nish the com­mis­sion with doc­u­ments in his pos­ses­sion. The fi­nal wit­ness state­ment, said Car­ballo, was shaped by the le­gal coun­sel to the com­mis­sion. Daly con­tend­ed that the wit­ness state­ment was most­ly about trans­ac­tions and Duprey and Mon­teil. Car­ballo point­ed out that those were the two de­ci­sion mak­ers in the com­pa­ny at the time. Daly's ob­ser­va­tion was that the wit­ness state­ment was aimed ex­clu­sive­ly at Mon­teil. "This is the truth of what I have seen. I have no per­son­al axe to grind with any­one," said Car­ballo.

But Daly ques­tioned how the wit­ness state­ment "came to be in that con­di­tion" when the com­mis­sion had in­de­pen­dent coun­sel. "Why is the wit­ness state­ment so fo­cused?" he asked. Daly point­ed out that the state­ment lacked any in­sight in­to the reg­u­la­tors and au­di­tors and ques­tioned whether he was shown any such doc­u­ments by the in­de­pen­dent coun­sel. He charged that Car­ballo came with the in­ten­tion to "stitch up two peo­ple." "No dis­re­spect to the bench but every­thing about the wit­ness and the ev­i­dence is point­ing one way," he said. "Part of my at­tack," he stat­ed, "is to make sure the wit­ness has not been used as a tool."

And as Daly pro­ceed­ed to at­tack Car­ballo on al­le­ga­tions, Car­ballo con­tend­ed trans­ac­tions can be re-opened so that Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers can re­claim monies and he re­fused to with­draw any al­le­ga­tions. At this point, Col­man closed the ses­sion. Daly replied: "This is the stan­dard of this com­mis­sion. We come here to lis­ten to rake."