Derek Achong

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is chal­leng­ing a judge's de­ci­sion to ap­prove the fees claimed by the joint liq­uida­tors of CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) for their work in 2019. 

When the State's ap­peal came up for hear­ing be­fore Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith and James Aboud Mon­day morn­ing, Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake sug­gest­ed that it be heard ex­pe­di­tious­ly as the liq­uida­tors, Hugh Dick­son and David Holukoff, of in­ter­na­tion­al ac­count­ing firm Grant Thorn­ton, are still per­form­ing their roles. 

"The prin­ci­pal cred­i­tor is very con­cerned," Peake said, as she not­ed that the is­sue dealt with ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, who led CLF's le­gal team, agreed that the pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal should be dealt with ur­gent­ly but said the par­ties had to wait un­til High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran is­sued a writ­ten ver­sion of his de­ci­sion which was de­liv­ered oral­ly al­most two months ago.

"We want to get it right," Ho­sein said. 

Jus­tice Smith, who led the pan­el, agreed with Ho­sein's con­cern about the need for Ram­cha­ran's writ­ten rul­ing to pre­pare sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal. 

"I un­der­stand the need for ex­pe­di­tion but if we try to rush this it could be one step for­ward two steps back," Jus­tice Smith said.

Jus­tice Smith gave the par­ties dead­lines for fil­ing their sub­mis­sions, which were con­tin­gent on Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran's writ­ten rul­ing and promised that the Ap­peal Court would set a ur­gent hear­ing which is con­ve­nient for the at­tor­neys in­volved in the case. 

In Ju­ly 2017, the Gov­ern­ment suc­cess­ful­ly pe­ti­tioned Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran to put the con­glom­er­ate in­to liq­ui­da­tion to clear its re­main­ing debt from when it re­ceived a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar bail-out in 2009. 

In their sev­enth re­port to Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran dat­ed De­cem­ber 18 last year, the liq­uida­tors not­ed that their com­pa­ny had claimed a lit­tle over $60 mil­lion in fees and ex­pens­es for their work be­tween 2017 and last Oc­to­ber. 

A dis­count was al­so re­port­ed­ly ap­plied to the fees claimed. 

Since the liq­ui­da­tion, there has been lit­i­ga­tion chal­leng­ing the pro­posed sales of dif­fer­ent as­sets by the liq­uida­tors. 

The AG's Of­fice is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ravi Heffes-Doon and Rom­ney Thomas, while Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh ap­peared along­side Ho­sein for CLF.