Richard Lord

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says Gov­ern­ment is bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment to pre­vent Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers from ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Cen­tral Bank. This is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy over mea­sures by the Gov­ern­ment to re­solve the $12-bil­lion Cli­co bailout is­sue. The bill re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate to be­come law. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment has the re­quired ma­jor­i­ty in the House but it re­quires the sup­port of four In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to be passed. The Cli­co ini­tia­tive has not found favour with thou­sands of pol­i­cy­hold­ers who have threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment in the mat­ter.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment was ready to deal with any threat of le­gal ac­tion on the Cli­co is­sue. He said the Gov­ern­ment would ta­ble a bill in Par­lia­ment this week "to give le­gal au­thor­i­ty and prop­er frame­work to ef­fect this so­lu­tion." But Ma­haraj in a three-page state­ment, is­sued to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, said the move was in­tend­ed to "safe­guard the Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank and to prej­u­dice the (Cli­co) pol­i­cy­hold­ers." Ma­haraj stressed: "The bill threat­ens the rule of law in T&T." Ma­haraj said the Cen­tral Bank ex­er­cised "emer­gency pow­ers over Cli­co last year and it is there­fore sup­posed to be in con­trol of Cli­co." He said the bill sought to have the bil­lion-dol­lar fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance giv­en to the Cen­tral Bank and Cli­co by the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment re­paid to the new Gov­ern­ment. He said the leg­is­la­tion pro­posed that be done be­fore all oth­er pol­i­cy­hold­ers were dealt with.

"It al­so seeks to em­pow­er the Gov­ern­ment to ap­prove the fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance al­ready giv­en and any present or fu­ture fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance that was or will be giv­en," he added. He added that once the res­o­lu­tion was pub­lished "no cred­i­tor of Cli­co (pol­i­cy­hold­ers) can get any rem­e­dy against Cli­co with­out pri­or writ­ten con­sent of the Cen­tral Bank. Ma­haraj re­it­er­at­ed: "The ju­ris­dic­tion of the courts will be tak­en away once this bill be­comes law." The for­mer AG stressed: "If this bill be­comes law, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al can take over any ex­ist­ing claim brought by any pol­i­cy­hold­er and dis­con­tin­ue it or with­draw it, or set­tle it on terms he thinks fit. "If a pol­i­cy­hold­er now has a claim against Cli­co for monies prop­er­ly ow­ing to him, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will be able to take over that claim, re­place your lawyers with his and with­draw the claim, (with) no ques­tions asked," Ma­haraj stressed.