The liq­uida­tors of the CL Fi­nan­cial group have re­ject­ed a claim by An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd to be re­paid a debt of $984.55 mil­lion, the com­pa­ny's chair­man, Ter­rence Bharath, told shocked share­hold­ers at the an­nu­al meet­ing yes­ter­day.

The debt, which is de­scribed as "cur­rent re­ceiv­ables from re­lat­ed par­ties," has been on An­gos­tu­ra's bal­ance sheet since 2009, when the amount record­ed in the an­nu­al re­port of the rum and bit­ters pro­duc­er was stat­ed as $974.20 mil­lion.

At the meet­ing, which was held at the com­pa­ny's Laven­tille head­quar­ters and pro­duc­tion cen­tre, Bharath ex­plained that the rea­sons giv­en by the liq­uida­tors for re­ject­ing the re­ceiv­able were that the An­gos­tu­ra claim was statute barred and be­cause of a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion for the claim.

The An­gos­tu­ra chair­man said some of the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ing proof of the claim have dis­ap­peared.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny, Bharath said An­gos­tu­ra in­tends to pur­sue the mat­ter of its claim vig­or­ous­ly and had re­tained an Eng­lish King's Coun­sel and a lo­cal Se­nior Coun­sel to de­fend it.

For many years, CL Fi­nan­cial and its sub­sidiary Cli­co were An­gos­tu­ra's largest share­hold­ers, own­ing 44.96 per cent and 32.53 per cent of the rum and bit­ters pro­duc­er re­spec­tive­ly.

CL Fi­nan­cial col­lapsed in 2009, with the Gov­ern­ment ac­quir­ing 49 per cent of Cli­co, the group's main sub­sidiary, and pro­vid­ing the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny with $4.99 bil­lion in pref­er­ence shares.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert went to court in 2017 to have CL Fi­nan­cial wound up. As a re­sult of the le­gal ac­tion, joint liq­uida­tors from the fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny, Grant Thorn­ton, were ap­point­ed by the High Court to take over the man­age­ment of the group.

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd's 2016 an­nu­al re­port states: "There were no move­ments in the pro­vi­sion re­lat­ed to the group’s par­ent com­pa­ny re­ceiv­able dur­ing the year.

"Dur­ing the year, ne­go­ti­a­tions com­menced be­tween the man­age­ment of the Group and its par­ent com­pa­ny, with re­spect to set­tle­ment of the in­ter­com­pa­ny re­ceiv­able. An ex­pert con­sul­tant was en­gaged to as­sist with de­vel­op­ing a set­tle­ment struc­ture.

"As at year end and date of ap­proval of these con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments there were no in­di­ca­tions that the pro­vi­sion for im­pair­ment re­lat­ed to the re­ceiv­able should be re­vised."

Bharath al­so an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment had ini­ti­at­ed a com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion process for land at To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions, a com­pa­ny that An­gos­tu­ra and Guardian Hold­ings own. To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions was the de­vel­op­er of the es­tate on which the Mag­dale­na Ho­tel and sev­er­al man­sions are lo­cat­ed.