For­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey yes­ter­day came out in sup­port of the Ger­man mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers of MHTL (Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd) con­tin­u­ing to run the com­pa­ny and at the same time crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as the "back­door" na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the pri­vate­ly run methanol com­pa­ny.In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment, pub­lished in to­day's T&T Guardian, Duprey ex­pressed "alarm" at the head­line "Ger­mans grab for Methanol" in this news­pa­per on Fri­day.That sto­ry re­port­ed, ex­clu­sive­ly, on the de­ci­sion by Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd - the Ger­man mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers of MHTL - to file for in­ter­na­tion­al ar­bi­tra­tion to re­verse Cli­co's ma­jor­i­ty 56.6 per cent stake in MHTL.The mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers ar­gue that be­cause Cli­co is con­trolled by the Gov­ern­ment, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny's 56.6 per cent stake in MHTL amounts to the na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the methanol com­pa­ny, which is lo­cat­ed on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.In the ad­ver­tise­ment, Duprey said the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers - com­pris­ing Ger­man com­pa­nies, Fer­rostaal, Pro­man and Helm, which hold 43.47 per cent of MHTL - "pro­vid­ed most of the in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal as well as a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of pre-fund­ing of CL Fi­nan­cial's ac­tu­al eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in MHTL."

Duprey stat­ed he ,"to­geth­er with this group of peo­ple, built MHTL in­to the world-class com­pa­ny which it is to­day and our coun­try needs to show these peo­ple the re­spect they have earned and, with­out doubt, de­serve."Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man, to­geth­er he and the Ger­man com­pa­nies "had a con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy re­sult­ing in the in­vest­ment of bil­lions of dol­lars, the cre­ation of thou­sands of high­ly skilled jobs, pay­ment of huge gas pur­chas­es of tax­es and dis­tri­b­u­tion of div­i­dends."

Ad­mit­ting that CL Fi­nan­cial had de­fault­ed its oblig­a­tions to Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy -the hold­ing com­pa­ny for the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers - Duprey said that "de­fault and the Gov­ern­ment's sup­posed 'tem­po­rary con­trol' of the com­pa­ny should not be used as the 'back­door' na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of a pri­vate com­pa­ny."The stew­ard­ship of MHTL should be left with the peo­ple who helped me build it and (it) should not be turned in­to an­oth­er Petrotrin... It should con­tin­ue to be run by pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors who bring knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence to the busi­ness."Duprey al­so stat­ed that na­tion­al­i­sa­tion and con­fis­ca­tion of prop­er­ty were not good pol­i­cy for any coun­try "and one need look no fur­ther than Venezuela for con­fir­ma­tion of this."

Mean­while, at­tor­neys for Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy wrote to Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, on Tues­day last ex­press­ing con­cern about the min­istry so­lic­it­ing ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est in re­spect of the de­vel­op­ment of a methanol-to-petro­chem­i­cals project.In the le­gal let­ter, Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy stat­ed that as long as the Gov­ern­ment re­mained an in­di­rect share­hold­er in MHTL, "the min­istry would be hin­dered in its dis­charge of this func­tion giv­en the po­ten­tial im­pact that its ef­forts may have on the op­er­a­tion and vi­a­bil­i­ty of MHTL."The let­ter ar­gued that "the min­istry's con­duct in so­lic­it­ing these ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est is in­con­sis­tent with seek­ing to max­imise MHTL's val­ue to its share­hold­ers."The Ger­man mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers al­so ar­gued that the award of the project to any com­pa­ny, apart from MHTL, was "like­ly to im­pact their com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship with MHTL, re­sult­ing in a re­duc­tion of that com­pa­ny's rev­enue."