Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne says he is not sat­is­fied with the re­sponse from his Trinidad and To­ba­go coun­ter­part re­gard­ing the non-pay­ment of mil­lions of US dol­lars linked to the col­lapse of Trinidad-based in­sur­ance com­pa­nies CLI­CO and British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (BAICO) in 2009. 

Browne, who is chair­man of the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union (EC­CU) sub-com­mit­tee on in­sur­ance, had said last month that a de­ci­sion had been tak­en to take the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the Port of Spain-based Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ). 

The EC­CU groups the is­lands of An­guil­la, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat, St.t Kitts-Nevis, St. Lu­cia and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Prime Min­is­ter Browne said he had writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley af­ter an EC­CU meet­ing had agreed unan­i­mous­ly to take the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment to court af­ter three failed at­tempts to get them to pay the out­stand­ing funds. Speak­ing on his ra­dio pro­gramme here over the last week­end, Browne told lis­ten­ers “his (Row­ley’s)re­sponse is one that I think he has co-min­gled a num­ber of is­sues, even some gra­tu­itous pay­ments that were made by the late (prime min­is­ter) Patrick Man­ning he has tried to in­clude in a pos­si­ble set­tle­ment. 

“So I am about to re­spond to him to let him know that he is mis­tak­en and that the is­sues he has raised in his let­ter they cer­tain­ly have no bear­ing to the case that we are pur­su­ing,” Browne said, with­out dis­clos­ing the full con­tent of Row­ley’s let­ter. 

The EC­CU said that Trinidad and To­ba­go had made a com­mit­ment to pay US$100 mil­lion to the mem­ber coun­tries but on­ly US$40 mil­lion was dis­bursed fol­low­ing the col­lapse of C L Fi­nan­cial, the own­ers of CLI­CO and British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (BAICO). 

In Oc­to­ber last year, a group of British Amer­i­can and CLI­CO pol­i­cy­hold­ers in the East­ern Caribbean filed a law­suit at the CCJ against the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Browne said that the EC­CU de­ci­sion to fol­low suit had been in the works for sev­er­al years. 

“Let me make it abun­dant­ly clear too that …the pol­i­cy hold­ers will come to­geth­er col­lec­tive­ly and they have a col­lec­tive suit against the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That is sep­a­rate from what we are pur­su­ing here. 

“The case I am pur­su­ing is a set­tle­ment that was agreed to even be­fore I be­came prime min­is­ter of a US$100 mil­lion. The gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go paid US$40 mil­lion of it, US$60 mil­lion is still out­stand­ing. 

“We are say­ing we would like to have it paid, we would like to ne­go­ti­ate a rea­son­able pay­ment that doesn’t cre­ate any strain on the trea­sury of the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So if bonds are to be giv­en then they will pay the in­ter­est over a pe­ri­od of time. 

“We are say­ing here it’s a pledge that was giv­en and it was giv­en con­sid­er­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go ben­e­fit­ted from the CLI­CO/BAICO es­tate. We have said to them that the treaty of Ch­aguara­mas (which gov­erns the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment) is such that you can­not ac­cord spe­cialised treat­ment to your pol­i­cy hold­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers and out oth­ers who are part of this very in­te­gra­tion move­ment at a dis­ad­van­tage”. 

Browne said it is on that ba­sis the EC­CU be­lieve that it has a case if Port of Spain re­fus­es to set­tle. 

He said this is­sue had first been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Port of Spain by St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ralph Gon­salves and since tak­ing over the chair­man­ship of the sub-com­mit­tee on in­sur­ance in the EC­CU last year, “as I have said to the dis­tin­guished Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go this is not some­thing that I want to pur­sue at the lev­el of the court 

“But if we feel that we are not get­ting any jus­tice then we will have no choice be­cause we al­so have to pro­tect our pol­i­cy hold­ers, our stake­hold­ers just as how they have pro­tect­ed theirs,” Browne said. 

 ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Oct 3, CMC