Owen Bapi­tiste

Last month, vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Owen Bap­tiste, for­mer ed­i­tor-in-chief of both the T&T Guardian and the Trinidad Ex­press, spent a week in Flori­da talk­ing with Lawrence Duprey.This is the sec­ond of an ex­clu­sive five-part se­ries by Bap­tiste, based on their long, frank dis­cus­sions of Duprey's past and his vi­sion and hopes for the fu­ture.

Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, Wednes­day, March 20–Lawrence Duprey was speak­ing but I was think­ing of my son Si­mon. He was al­ways full of ideas for books I could write to make mon­ey. The last time it was about Dole Chadee."For­get any bi­og­ra­phy of Er­ic Williams," he told me over break­fast at the Hilton."He was the Fa­ther of the Na­tion and all that, but read­ers want to be en­ter­tained, not to be bored by po­lit­i­cal anec­dotes."

Now I had this no­tion that a book about the rise and fall of the Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Cli­co) could present valu­able lessons for our young en­tre­pre­neurs, but Lawrence Duprey had seized in­stead on an ar­ti­cle I had writ­ten years ago about Er­ic Gairy, the one-time flam­boy­ant po­lit­i­cal leader in Grena­da, and his eyes were filled with dol­lar bills."If you could write a sto­ry about Gairy, I could get Den­zel Wash­ing­ton to play the lead role. Now that is some­thing I could be in­ter­est­ed in!"

I thought I should tell him about Si­mon.The truth is I was be­gin­ning to see Lawrence Duprey as a busi­ness junkie and I was be­gin­ning to be­lieve that we would leave him the next day with­out the for­mer chair­man of Cli­co and the CLF Group of Com­pa­nies agree­ing to a book deal. Af­ter two years it had been a long shot, but his fi­nal agree­ment to meet with us had bol­stered my hope that Duprey Part Two was pos­si­ble.

How­ev­er, the days of in­ter­view­ing him in the lob­by of the Com­fort Suites at 1800 South Fed­er­al High­way in Fort Laud­erdale had di­min­ished some of my orig­i­nal en­thu­si­asm.He was still a smil­ing gi­ant of a man, very com­fort­able in or­di­nary clothes, but I was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand how haz­ardous it must have been for his man­agers, left on their own to grap­ple with the de­mo­graph­ics of a glob­al com­pa­ny, and how it was in­evitable for them to abuse his fre­quent ab­sences from the vine­yard.

"Don't mis­un­der­stand me," Duprey said cheer­i­ly."It is not that I do not be­lieve in Ni­et­zsche's ex­am­ple of the su­per­man."It was not the first time he had sur­prised me with the wide scope of his read­ing and in­deed his ad­vice to West In­di­ans was that they should read more."All so­ci­eties must have icons, men and women to be role mod­els for the young, and it is clear, as you say, that we should read more and write more about our ex­pe­ri­ences and achieve­ments, but I don't feel gung-ho about any book on me.

"How­ev­er, if you study what we have done, you will see our in­ten­tion was al­ways to leave the world a bet­ter place than we found it. The Buc­coo Reef Trust is proof of this and so is the San Juan Jabloteh foot­ball team."His sec­re­tary for more than 23 years, Cheryl Net­to, was wired in­to this phi­los­o­phy.

"The East West Coach­ing School," said Net­to, as ev­i­dence to his claims of im­prov­ing the lives of the dis­ad­van­taged in Caribbean so­ci­ety, "was re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing many youths off the streets and out of trou­ble and train­ing them in sports, par­tic­u­lar­ly in foot­ball.

The pro­gramme had been run suc­cess­ful­ly for many years and some of the youths had ex­celled in sports and were able to get schol­ar­ships to be ed­u­cat­ed abroad. And the East West Coach­ing School was in­deed re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing many youths off the streets and out of trou­ble."

"We hired peo­ple from the grass­roots and trained them," Duprey said, ig­nor­ing a call on his Black­Ber­ry."Claudius Da­con, Ian Gar­cia and Rus­sell Tesheira were some of the peo­ple we hired, trained and they went on to get MBAs while they ran com­pa­nies.

"Colo­nial Life had a prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed board and pro­fes­sion­al man­agers and our mis­sion was to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty and help pol­i­cy-hold­ers plan for their re­tire­ment. Iden­ti­fy­ing the dis­pos­sessed in our West In­di­an so­ci­eties–it is what Hugo Chavez had done in Venezuela and what Pope Fran­cis did in Ar­genti­na.

There is a big ques­tion hang­ing over the head of the new pres­i­dent of Venezuela, in fact. Will he con­tin­ue the oil pol­i­cy Chavez had with poor West In­di­an is­lands? In an­oth­er as­pect, Chavez's death is a big thing be­cause af­ter Chavez is Cas­tro and that will bring about change in the re­gion.

"You should chat with Colo­nial Life's care­tak­er, Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, when you get back to Trinidad to find out how he is prepar­ing for these events."The more you knew the man the eas­i­er it was to see the bene­fac­tor in all his roles and the so­cial­ist's wish for a well-off if not egal­i­tar­i­an so­ci­ety.

Every day his wife Sylvia would dri­ve him to the Com­fort Suites in a black SUV and he would spend three or four hours talk­ing about the peo­ple he worked with in the life in­sur­ance com­pa­ny his un­cle, Cyril Lu­cius Duprey, had start­ed in 1937 and which, with Cyril Os­wald Mon­san­to, he had made one of the fi­nan­cial suc­cess sto­ries in the Caribbean.

It was clear that he had a world view of fi­nance, man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion that were the pil­lars on which he had con­struct­ed the CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd Group of Com­pa­nies that he saw as "a bound­ary-less learn­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion en­gaged in di­verse busi­ness­es and en­hanc­ing the qual­i­ty of life in the com­mu­ni­ties in which (they) serve."

The sud­den need of Colo­nial Life for a gov­ern­ment bailout had put a stop to his fi­nan­cial wiz­ardry, but had not robbed him of his char­ac­ter­is­tic op­ti­mism. This had hap­pened per­haps once in his life, when, in 2009, he was told that a war­rant was be­ing pre­pared for his ar­rest. It was not the end he had en­vis­aged for his ef­forts to build a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive cor­po­ra­tion and a bet­ter T&T. Clear­ly he was a man with a vi­sion and de­sire to pro­mote the Caribbean.

"I was amazed by the lack of good­will I sud­den­ly came up against. The world fi­nan­cial cri­sis had made it im­pos­si­ble for us to get help from abroad that had been the source of most of our fund­ing. But all door­swere closed to us in Trinidad as well. Maybe I found out then, as you were ask­ing be­fore, that I had no friends. And I saw this fi­nal act as the killing of the phoenix. I knew to pro­tect my fam­i­ly and me I had to leave Trinidad.

"And the del­uge of neg­a­tive re­port­ing in the me­dia since then has proved me right. The fact is, T&T is a unique­ly men­da­cious so­ci­ety, and every day since then I have won­dered if it was worth­while to build a life on the hope of al­le­vi­at­ing pover­ty.""There is no doubt that your un­cle be­lieved it was," Rhona said.

"And I doubt that he re­ceived the kinds of re­mu­ner­a­tion that CLF board di­rec­tors and staff got dur­ing your watch. If you ex­am­ine the lives of your fel­low di­rec­tors and col­leagues they don't ap­pear to be the worst off for hav­ing faith in the fu­ture you of­fered them."

I was sure that she was think­ing of An­dr� Mon­teil and Gi­ta Sakal, who, it is gen­er­al­ly known, were gen­er­ous­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their work in the com­pa­ny. How many oth­er cor­po­rate or le­gal sec­re­taries in T&T have re­ceived on re­tire­ment a pay­ment of US$5 mil­lion and who sim­ply kept this in a draw­er? Was it in dis­be­lief or amaze­ment?"I am pre­pared to say now and at any oth­er time that Ms Sakal earned it," said Duprey.

"She was in­cred­i­ble. There is a lot of talk out there about her role in the com­pa­ny and about her com­pen­sa­tion pack­age, but if we had to hire for­eign tal­ent to do what she did, we would have had to pay much more.

I am aware that Ms Sakal learnt a lot on the job, where she got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with some of the largest law firms in New York, and she used this knowl­edge in the de­vel­op­ment of Colo­nial Life and our oth­er com­pa­nies. She was par­tic­u­lar­ly ac­tive in the ac­qui­si­tion and suc­cess of our methanol com­pa­nies and in build­ing fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ships with ex­ter­nal bankers.

"That is all I want to say about Ms Sakal for now."

A busi­ness junkie

There was some­thing ex­cru­ci­at­ing­ly wor­ry­ing about Lawrence Duprey: it was not pos­si­ble to swear by promis­es he made.He would say that he was busy with bankers, lawyers or busi­ness as­so­ciates and that was why he was un­able to be with us at the hour he promised to do so."I was up since five o'clock this morn­ing talk­ing with busi­ness as­so­ciates in Chi­na," he would say, ex­cus­ing his late­com­ing.

I had no prob­lem with the fact that he was work­ing, but couldn't he call to let us know that he would be late for our ap­point­ment? Was it the way he did busi­ness? I had said to him that he was piss­ing me off, as he had prob­a­bly pissed off his team of man­agers at the St Vin­cent Street head of­fice in Port-of-Spain dur­ing those mad years of ex­trav­a­gance.And the truth is I wasn't sur­prised when Car­los John told me on my re­turn to Trinidad that, "You know that Lawrence is a zig-zag man."

Clear­ly he had ex­as­per­at­ed Car­los too with his time-keep­ing.And yet this was the man who, for two decades, was in charge of a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar op­er­a­tion and whose lead­er­ship the Man­ning gov­ern­ment had trust­ed enough to give Colo­nial Life a TT$7 bil­lion bailout in 2009.Who, I won­dered, un­der­stood him, and who could he still call friend?

John's loy­al­ty had nev­er been in ques­tion, but it sur­prised me just a lit­tle when Duprey said that he was plan­ning a trip to Africa as soon as he was back from a trip to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and that John would be with him. This was to take place the same week­end I be­gan this se­ries for the Sun­day Guardian, but, call­ing John to con­firm Duprey's trav­el arrange­ments, I learnt that the African trip had been post­poned "in­def­i­nite­ly."

But why Car­los John? Ob­vi­ous­ly I wasn't aware of John's con­sid­er­able skills as a UNC min­is­ter of In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and I had no knowl­edge of his tal­ents to "open doors," as Lawrence de­scribed their part­ner­ship.But I was wrong too about Karen Nunez-Tesheira, who he said had blamed Colo­nial Life for the death of her hus­band."She didn't like my call­ing him to a meet­ing at five in the morn­ing!"

I knew how sil­ly and ab­surd it sound­ed, but I re­mem­bered that Ex­press man­agers used to be an­noyed when­ev­er Ken Gor­don in­sist­ed that we meet at his beach­front home in Ma­yaro on a week­end.

Duprey joked about hav­ing made her an­gry at call­ing her hus­band to work at un­god­ly hours in the morn­ing. But sure­ly Ms Nunez-Tesheira should have un­der­stood that such meet­ings were re­quired of a chair­man who was al­ways fly­ing to a new ren­dezvous with prospec­tive clients and that it was not pos­si­ble for him to keep nor­mal work­ing hours.It was clear that Lawrence Duprey sees pos­si­bil­i­ties for mak­ing a for­tune from every new idea that cross­es his path.

I re­mem­ber the first morn­ing we had met in the lob­by of the Com­fort Suites and he had been mes­merised by the traf­fic of in­com­ing and de­part­ing guests."We could have bought or es­tab­lished ho­tels like this in every state in the Unit­ed States," he said mo­rose­ly, "but I nev­er got the sup­port for such a ven­ture. Look at the traf­fic in this place! I am sure it is like this every day of the week!"

That was why he could diss the idea for a se­quel to the Cyril Lu­cius Duprey book but would rave about a book about Grena­da's Er­ic Gairy or about the Ma­roons in Ja­maica."If you write me a sto­ry about Gairy," he said, "I could get Den­zel Wash­ing­ton to play the lead role!"

Morn­ing af­ter morn­ing, as we drank cup af­ter cup of black Amer­i­can cof­fee, I thought it might have been eas­i­er for Rhona to tol­er­ate this way­ward­ness; she had been the one who had dealt with him in the nineties when he had in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est in Caribbean Sys­tems & Ser­vices Ltd, and she was the one who had sat many times out­side his of­fice with Car­los John wait­ing for his cheque to send Caribbean Af­fairs to the print­ers in the Unit­ed States.

But af­ter the week­end of in­ter­views I was not sure that he was telling us graph­ic and ir­re­sistible ma­te­r­i­al for any book. Every night when we lis­tened to the record­ings I had one com­ment: "Lawrence," I would say, "is talk­ing a lot but he isn't say­ing any­thing." Of course, this was the view of a man who had not been pay­ing any at­ten­tion to the Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.It in­fu­ri­at­ed her. "He couldn't be that sil­ly," she would say, wish­ing to play over the record­ings.

"All he talks about is con­tent, so he must know you can­not be hap­py af­ter the hours we spend talk­ing to­geth­er."I was smil­ing, adding fu­el to her fury."And he hasn't made any ef­fort to take us around to see the Green Is­land Project and oth­er de­vel­op­ments made in his name, ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per re­ports that he de­nies. I won­der what his wit­ness state­ment to the com­mis­sion of en­quiry is like.""He promised to let you have a copy to­mor­row, didn't he?"

"He did, but frankly I think it will re­veal a man who will claim in­no­cence by de­fault. In his case it will be that he was not present when the s--t hit the fan. And that in any event it was up to man­agers to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of pol­i­cy­hold­ers and in­vestors. He is go­ing to slight the dic­tum that the buck stops with him."

"Would you be able to write any­thing? It seems a great pity that he hasn't com­mit­ted him­self to the se­quel to Duprey. He's more in­formed than many CEOs I have met and I think he is gen­uine about his de­sire to help peo­ple im­prove their lives.""Oh, I agree with what you say and I am sure he is pleased with the op­por­tu­ni­ty we have giv­en him to re­hearse his sto­ry if he is fi­nal­ly sub­poe­naed to give ev­i­dence in a court of law. But so far it is as the Prince of Den­mark said, just words, words, words."

"Dammit! I hate him!""Take a num­ber.""Is it that bad?""I know you could feel sor­ry for him. And I be­lieve he's se­ri­ous about want­i­ng to put things right with Colo­nial Life.

"But you heard him. Even rel­a­tives who are share­hold­ers and who were ben­e­fi­cia­ries at the smor­gas­bord and who now have lost their free lunch­es are an­gry with him. 'I have done noth­ing wrong in the eyes of the law,' he says, 'but now that the com­pa­ny's for­tunes have changed I am see­ing how unique­ly wicked Trinida­di­ans are. Go back to Ten­nessee Williams' A Street­car Named De­sire. It is a men­da­cious so­ci­ety.'"