The move to wind up the de­funct Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) will go ahead, de­spite an ef­fort by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to thwart it. On Mon­day, the Court of Ap­peal ruled that CIB in­ter­im man­ag­er Carl Hi­ralal–In­spec­tor of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions–was pro­ce­du­ral­ly cor­rect in the wind­ing-up pe­ti­tion be­fore the court.

In an oral rul­ing, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie ruled that the pe­ti­tion was not wrong in law and Hi­ralal had the pow­er to bring the pe­ti­tion un­der the Com­pa­nies Act. Archie, Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo and Humphrey Stollmey­er com­prised the pan­el. NGC, led by Dr Claude Den­bow, was how­ev­er, suc­cess­ful in con­vinc­ing the pan­el that Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh had erred in not al­low­ing NGC to ex­am­ine the pro­ce­dure of the pe­ti­tion be­fore him. Ac­cord­ing to the pan­el, the judge sit­ting in the low­er court should have heard the ar­gu­ments.

Boodoos­ingh is al­so hear­ing the wind­ing-up pe­ti­tion brought by the NGC.

Den­bow, who leads Dhar­men­dra Pun­wasee and Don­na Den­bow, had ar­gued that CIB could not wind up it­self. Rather, he con­tend­ed, it was up to in­ter­im man­ag­er to bring the pe­ti­tion on be­half of the com­pa­ny. The pe­ti­tion will be heard in Jan­u­ary. In April, this year, Hi­ralal filed an ap­pli­ca­tion at the High Court to have the com­pa­ny wound up.

He was ap­point­ed in­ter­im man­ag­er of the CIB by the Cen­tral Bank. In his af­fi­davit, he stat­ed that the com­pa­ny was "de­funct." NGC has ob­ject­ed to the wind­ing up pe­ti­tion, and is seek­ing to re­cov­er more than $1.1 bil­lion in­vest­ed with the CIB.