An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne hasn’t shak­en the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment by threat­en­ing to sue for US$60 mil­lion based on promis­es made for com­pen­sa­tion fol­low­ing the col­lapse of Cli­co in 2009.

In an au­dio in­ter­view up­loaded to the YouTube page of “An­tigua Break­ing News” on Sun­day, which came from an in­ter­view done ear­li­er on Pointe FM’s Browne on Browne pro­gramme, Browne is heard say­ing, “We are pur­su­ing lit­i­ga­tion against Duprey and com­pa­ny and pos­si­bly, we may even­tu­al­ly have to sue the gov­ern­ment of T&T.”

Browne said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had promised to pay a set­tle­ment of $100 mil­lion but had on­ly paid $40 mil­lion. He did not say from which gov­ern­ment, and which year this promise was made.

“They have not even treat­ed us with the type of re­spect that is typ­i­cal, you know, among coun­tries and col­leagues. So we’ll be writ­ing to them again, this prob­a­bly gonna be the third time,” Browne con­tin­ued in the au­dio.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, T&T Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials de­clined to com­ment of­fi­cial­ly but Guardian Me­dia was told the Gov­ern­ment has no record of any such cor­re­spon­dence be­ing sent to them. How­ev­er, sources said the Gov­ern­ment is ready for any pos­si­ble law­suit, main­ly be­cause lawyers ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment are say­ing there is no le­gal foun­da­tion for such a law­suit.

The le­gal ad­vice not­ed that the An­tiguan gov­ern­ment would have to over­come the June 28, 2016 Privy Coun­cil judg­ment in the case of The Unit­ed Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group and oth­ers (the Ap­pel­lants) v The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The rul­ing ba­si­cal­ly states a gov­ern­ment can over­ride a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s promise based on the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances. The Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers ar­gued then that the Gov­ern­ment gave as­sur­ances of a Cli­co bailout which cre­at­ed a “le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion” of sup­port. How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment did not agree to the terms when it an­nounced a new bailout plan in 2010/2011.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled the Gov­ern­ment was en­ti­tled to change its mind for what it per­ceived to be good rea­sons based on macro­eco­nom­ic and macro-po­lit­i­cal is­sues.

But it’s those eco­nom­ic changes that have giv­en Prime Min­is­ter Browne con­fi­dence T&T may be able to make a full pay­ment. On the ra­dio show, he said, “We hope that now that their for­tunes have im­proved, that they are ben­e­fit­ing from the in­crease and es­ca­la­tion in fu­el prices, that they will put some sys­tem in place to cov­er the rest of the li­a­bil­i­ty.”