Unithold­ers in Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund (CIF) are due to re­ceive a fi­nal dis­tri­b­u­tion of cash from the fund in­to their bank ac­counts to­day, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice from Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion.

The no­tice, which was is­sued by Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion’s chair­man, Poly­carp Ro­many, in­di­cat­ed that the unithold­ers would re­ceive $0.02 per unit.

The CIF was a close-end­ed mu­tu­al fund that trad­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change for ten years and which was ter­mi­nat­ed on Jan­u­ary 2, 2023.

The CIF was es­tab­lished in 2012 as part of the bailout of the Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers and own­ers of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s mu­tu­al funds.

The CIF com­prised 40,072,299 shares in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) and Gov­ern­ment bonds val­ued at $702.86 mil­lion, which were dis­trib­uted to the unithold­ers of the CIF in ac­cor­dance with the num­ber of units they owned.

Unithold­ers re­ceived 0.1964 RFHL shares and 3.4454 bonds for every unit they owned.

Af­ter the cal­cu­la­tion of the num­ber of RFHL shares and Gov­ern­ment bonds the CIF unithold­ers re­ceived, the resid­ual amount was paid to the unithold­ers in cash.

The CIF unithold­ers re­ceived a dis­tri­b­u­tion of $0.57 per unit from the fund’s in­come on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023.

That pay­ment was made af­ter Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion made “full pro­vi­sion for all costs, debts, li­a­bil­i­ties, charges, ex­pens­es, claims and de­mands prop­er­ly in­curred or made in con­nec­tion with or aris­ing out of the ter­mi­na­tion of the fund,” ac­cord­ing to a Feb­ru­ary 27, 2023, no­tice is­sued by Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion.

Among the ex­pens­es that the Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion paid were the fees as­so­ci­at­ed with the ap­pli­ca­tion for the dereg­is­tra­tion and delist­ing of the Fund, which was filed with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

Ac­cord­ing to the CIF’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, pub­lished on March 29, 2023, the fund had ac­crued ex­pens­es of $36,573,778 in 2022. The fund’s ac­crued fees in 2021 amount­ed to $1,466,673.

The largest con­trib­u­tor to the sum of $36,573,778 in 2022 was the $34,846,093 the Fund paid in wind-up fees.

In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor in Feb­ru­ary 2023, head of the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, drew at­ten­tion to the is­sue of the CIF’s ac­crued fees, based on the unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments of the fund for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

“I am call­ing on the Cli­co Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, the fund trustee to please pro­vide, in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty and as a mat­ter of ur­gency, a de­tailed and sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion for this line item, bear­ing in mind that this is go­ing to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the fi­nal dis­tri­b­u­tion of funds that are due to be paid to the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the fund on or be­fore Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023,” Per­me­ll wrote.