The British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Co. Ltd and Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Co. Ltd. Pol­i­cy Hold­ers Group (BA­COL) has thanked pol­i­cy­hold­ers for “their pa­tience and their sup­port ”as it dis­agreed with the rul­ing by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) to dis­miss its law­suit brought against the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment.

“We deeply, but re­spect­ful­ly, dis­agree with the re­sult,” said BA­COL in a state­ment signed by the chair­man of its board of di­rec­tors, Dr. Patrick An­toine.

“While the judg­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant set­back, we shall not re­lent in the quest for eco­nom­ic jus­tice for BAICO and Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers. In the com­ing weeks and months, the judg­ment will be sub­ject­ed to keen analy­sis so as to as­sess whether it leaves any fur­ther av­enue open for ju­di­cial re­dress.,” he added.

On Tues­day, the the Trinidad-based Caribbean CCJ dis­missed the law­suit brought against the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment over the 2009 col­lapse of the British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Co. Ltd and Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Co. Ltd in­sur­ance gi­ants.

“The claim is dis­missed and the par­ties were or­dered to bear their own costs,” CCJ Pres­i­dent, Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders said in the sum­ma­ry of the judge­ment.

BA­COL brought the law­suit, claim­ing that af­ter 15 years of per­se­ver­ance, it has “sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanced the pur­suit of fi­nan­cial jus­tice” for pol­i­cy­hold­ers in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines who have “suf­fered ex­treme fi­nan­cial loss and hard­ship” af­ter the col­lapse of the British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Co. Ltd. (BAICO).

BA­COL said the col­lapse re­sult­ed in loss­es of over EC$800,000,000 (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) to busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als.

In April, the mat­ter of El­lis Richards and oth­ers ver­sus Trinidad and To­ba­go was heard by the CCJ, with the lawyers for the pol­i­cy­hold­ers ar­gu­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment breached the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas (RTC), which es­tab­lished the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), by bail­ing out cer­tain lo­cal CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) sub­sidiaries such as CLI­CO and British Amer­i­can Trinidad (BAT) and not re­gion­al sub­sidiaries such as BAICO.

The lawyers, in­clud­ing for­mer St. Lu­cia prime min­is­ter, Dr. Ken­ny An­tho­ny, said that while lo­cal pol­i­cy­hold­ers were pro­tect­ed and es­sen­tial­ly guar­an­teed their full in­vest­ments, the East­ern Caribbean pol­i­cy­hold­ers were on­ly able to re­coup ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 per cent of their in­vest­ments through the liq­ui­da­tion of the re­gion­al sub­sidiary.

“It is with pro­found dis­ap­point­ment that we in­form the pol­i­cy­hold­ers of British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (BAICO) who lost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars when the CL Fi­nan­cial Group (CLF) col­lapsed, that the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) has dis­missed the claims brought on their be­half against Trinidad & To­ba­go,” An­toine wrote in the state­ment. (CMC)