Attorney General Anand Ramlogan's announcement on Thursday at the post-Cabinet news conference that British Queen's Counsel Sir Gavin Lightman had agreed to serve as a one-man commission of enquiry marked an important advance in getting to the root causes of the collapse of the financial empires of Lawrence Duprey's CL Financial and Harry Harnarine's HCU. The Attorney General is to be commended for the speed with which he was able to advance the Prime Minister's promise of the establishment of the commission three weeks ago to the reality of the recruitment of the sole commissioner. The country awaits the start date of the Lightman Commission of Enquiry and the names of those who will be summoned to provide evidence before the body. For the commission to be an effective tool of discovery, the co-operation of all of those involved in the collapse of CL Financial and the HCU is absolutely necessary.
As far as the CL Financial debacle is concerned, among those who the public looks forward to hearing from would be former Finance Minister Karen Tesheira, former Prime Minister Patrick Manning, Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams, the Inspector of Financial Institutions, Carl Hiralal, CL Financial chairman Lawrence Duprey and his main lieutenant, Andre Monteil.
The evidence of the accounting firms, auditors, actuaries, consultants and foreign partners in both CL Financial and the HCU would also be very useful for the country to come to terms with why these financial institutions–into which so many people had placed so much faith–fell apart. The question is whether the main players in both financial disasters would be willing to come forward and subject themselves to potentially devastating cross examination–especially as one of Lightman's terms of reference is to determine whether there are any grounds for criminal and civil proceedings against any person or entity.
The commission of enquiry was called shortly after the Attorney General delivered the fruits of an 18-month long forensic investigation by Bob Lindquist to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the public official under the Westminster system who is responsible for initiating criminal prosecutions. There is a real probability, or even likelihood, that those who will be required to provide evidence to the commission of enquiry would place themselves in jeopardy of future prosecution if they chose to comply.
Since it is quite unlikely that any current or former public official, former company executive or service provider would willingly place themselves in jeopardy of future prosecution, it is not unreasonable to predict that Sir Gavin may indeed stand alone at his commission. In fact, there may be an inverse relationship between the importance of the personality to unravelling the twisted narratives in both CL Financial and the HCU and their reluctance to provide testimony to the commission of enquiry.
If not outright refusal to respond positively to the summones that will be issued, there is the fall-back position that some will use: Pleading the Fifth. This is the provision in the US Constitution which protects against self-incrimination. There are two potential ways to get around the dilemma of the self-incrimination. The Attorney General can remove the threat of future legal action by providing blanket and cast-iron immunities from future prosecution to one or more whistle-blowers who would be insiders with deep knowledge of the financial institutions. Or the Attorney General can proceed with an immunity-free commission, knowing that such a move is not likely to attract the "stars" of the drama to the party–but a party that nevertheless promises to be very exciting given the possible revelations from the forensic probes. Such revelations, if the commission is held in public, would have the ability to prejudice the future prosecutions of those who were culpable in the collapse of two of the country's most storied financial institutions. The question then becomes which road will the Attorney General chose to travel and will the public applaud his choice.