For­mer Cli­co busi­ness mag­nate Lawrence Duprey has writ­ten to the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co to say he is un­will­ing to ap­pear be­fore it to give ev­i­dence. Com­mis­sion sources said the com­mis­sions' sec­re­tary Ju­dith Gon­za­lez, re­ceived the let­ter yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Duprey ini­tial­ly said he was will­ing to tes­ti­fy at the en­quiry which is be­ing chaired by British QC Sir An­tho­ny Col­man. But sources told the T&T Guardian that when he con­sult­ed his le­gal team, he was ad­vised not to take part in it since the po­lice had be­gun an of­fi­cial probe in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co. Duprey sub­se­quent­ly wrote to say he was with­draw­ing his le­gal team from the pro­ceed­ings.

He could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered. In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Duprey, 79, who now lives in Flori­da, said he was broke and was­fo­cus­ing on phil­an­thropy. He al­so said his health was fail­ing.

The Gov­ern­ment has so far spentsome $20 bil­lion to bail out Cli­co which col­lapsed in 2009. The 11th hear­ing of the en­quiry is sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 26 to March 8 at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. Sources said it would pro­ceed de­spite Duprey's ab­sence.

Tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en at the en­quiry so far has al­leged hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were squan­dered and mil­lions of dol­lars trans­ferred dur­ing sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions. On No­vem­ber 8, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, in a me­dia re­lease, said the po­lice had start­ed a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in­volved in the col­lapse of Cli­co and re­lat­ed com­pa­nies.

The an­nounce­ment came as Gas­pard warned the me­dia "should not pub­lish or broad­cast any­thing which might jeop­ar­dise, hin­der or oth­er­wise prej­u­dice the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or any pos­si­ble pro­ceed­ings which might re­sult from it." He al­so wrote to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Col­man over the pub­lic hear­ing of the en­quiry. Gas­pard said if the en­quiry went on, it was like­ly to de­lay a pros­e­cu­tion and jeop­ar­dise the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Gas­pard's ini­tial let­ter to Ram­lo­gan ex­pressed con­cern over the en­quiry but the AG re­fused to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to sus­pend it im­me­di­ate­ly, or at least vary its terms of ref­er­ence. Col­man al­so re­fused Gas­pard's re­quest, say­ing it was ul­ti­mate­ly up to the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide whether the en­quiry should con­tin­ue in light of a po­lice probe.

Dur­ing the last hear­ing,for­mer Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) pres­i­dent Richard Trot­man said he wished to in­voke his right against self-in­crim­i­na­tion. He de­clined to tes­ti­fy fur­ther af­ter pre­vi­ous­ly giv­ing ev­i­dence that hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars had been hand­ed out in loans to for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing $121 mil­lion in un­ver­i­fied "loans" paid to a se­nior Cli­co of­fi­cial.

Trot­man al­so tes­ti­fied about trans­ac­tions which saw mil­lions of dol­lars be­ing used to buy land in Grena­da and al­so mon­ey be­ing "loaned" to oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials with­in the Cli­co con­glom­er­ate. Af­ter Gas­pard's warn­ing, Col­man ruled that Duprey would not have to re­spond to re­quests to at­tend the hear­ing on the ba­sis of the po­lice probe and the right to not in­crim­i­nate him­self. Trot­man was al­so warned of his right to not in­crim­i­nate him­self.

Rep­re­sent­ing Duprey at the en­quiry are An­drew Mitchell, QC, and at­tor­ney Li­onel Luck­hoo.