Gail Alexan­der

British Queen's Coun­sel Sir Garvin Light­man will form a one-man com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the fi­nan­cial cri­sis at CL Fi­nan­cial's sub­sidiaries and the Hin­du Cred­it Union, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan an­nounced yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Ram­lo­gan said the com­mis­sion's terms of ref­er­ence in­clud­ed de­ter­min­ing and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on whether there were any grounds for crim­i­nal and civ­il pro­ceed­ings against any per­son or en­ti­ty in the is­sue of the com­pa­nies. Ram­lo­gan said the com­mis­sion would al­so in­ves­ti­gate the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the $7 bil­lion which the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion pumped in­to a bailout plan for CL Fi­nan­cial. "That is, where the mon­ey gone," Ram­lo­gan em­pha­sised. The com­mis­sion will in­ves­ti­gate var­i­ous as­pects of the cri­sis con­cern­ing the fol­low­ing com­pa­nies: CL Fi­nan­cial, Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Co, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, British Amer­i­ca In­sur­ance Co Trinidad Ltd, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers (CMMB) Ltd and the HCL.

Ram­lo­gan said the com­mis­sion would have an out­er lim­it of six months to com­plete the probe, with a pre­ferred in­ner lim­it of four months. "The pur­pose of this com­mis­sion is to pre­vent the re­cur­rence of the fi­nan­cial cri­sis that has an 'oc­to­pus' ef­fect, where ten­ta­cles seem to stretch in every nook and cran­ny of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem," he said.

Light­man is a spe­cial­ist in in­sol­ven­cy, ar­bi­tra­tion, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and ad­min­is­tra­tive law. He holds first-class ho­n­ours in law, is a Ful­bright schol­ar and has han­dled tri­als in the UK, Sin­ga­pore, Hong Kong and the Caribbean. Coun­sel to the com­mis­sion will be an­oth­er British QC, Pe­ter Carter, a spe­cial­ist in fi­nan­cial crime and fraud. Among his work, Carter was in­volved in the BC­CI probe which found the for­mer BC­CI trea­sur­er guilty of an $18 mil­lion fraud. As­sist­ing the com­mis­sion will be lo­cal coun­sel Kelvin Ramkissoon and Ce­leste Jules.

On HCL's sta­tus as a pri­vate com­pa­ny un­der probe, Ram­lo­gan said the com­mis­sion of en­quiry had to be re­spect­ed by all. He said the com­mis­sion would have the right to sum­mon peo­ple. The AG said he ex­pect­ed that all those who had noth­ing to hide would co-op­er­ate. Among the terms, the com­m­mis­sion will make find­ings, ob­ser­va­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions on poli­cies, mea­sures or sys­tems that should be im­ple­ment­ed to de­tect, coun­ter­act and pre­vent a re­cur­rence of the sit­u­a­tion. It will al­so es­tab­lish a stan­dard, co-or­di­nat­ed and ef­fec­tive sys­tem of re­spons­es to be im­ple­ment­ed by in­sti­tu­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry and statu­to­ry bod­ies, and which may re­quire the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of such in­sti­tu­tions to pro­tect stake­hold­ers.

Oth­er terms of ref­er­ence in­clude:

�2 The cir­cum­stances, fac­tors, caus­es and rea­sons the led up to the Jan­u­ary 2009 in­ter­ven­tion in­to Cli­co and sub­sidiaries.

�2 The le­gal and fis­cal ba­sis for the 2009 de­ci­sion. How the in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal struc­tured and what poli­cies and pro­ce­dures were used in dis­tri­b­u­tion.

�2 The caus­es, rea­sons, cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the com­pa­nies' fi­nan­cial con­di­tion.

�2 The ef­fec­tive­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty of the au­dit­ing firms of the in­sti­tu­tions which could in­clude Cen­tral Bank, Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, and the weak­ness­es/short­com­ings of these, if any, in re­la­tion to the cri­sis.

�2 The ex­tent to which the ex­ist­ing ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing firms and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies ful­filled their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the law and best prac­tice.

�2 The as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties of the com­pa­nies and ex­tent to which ex­ist­ing as­sets are ca­pa­ble of meet­ing fi­nan­cial de­mands of de­pos­i­tors and oth­er in­vestors.

�2 The iden­ti­ty of any ac­count­ing/au­dit­ing firm, per­son, en­ti­ty or in­sti­tu­tion (whether lo­cal or oth­er­wise), who/which di­rect­ed, con­spired to, par­tic­i­pat­ed in, aid­ed or abet­ted, knew or ought to have known or could be im­pli­cat­ed in any act or deed lead­ing to the cri­sis.

�2 If pru­dent and prop­er cor­po­rate fi­nan­cial prac­tices were ad­hered to, whether such a sit­u­a­tion would have oc­curred.

�2 The ex­tent to which it may have been pos­si­ble to pre­vent stake­hold­ers in­ter­ests from be­com­ing com­pro­mised and whether the ac­count­ing and oth­er firms, plus those with over­sight, act­ed in ac­cor­dance with best prac­tices and in the best in­ter­est of stake­hold­ers.

�2 Whether any third par­ty act­ed in a man­ner that would have mis­led any de­pos­i­tors or stake­hold­ers, by neg­li­gent­ly or fraud­u­lent­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing the true fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the com­pa­nies.