Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor Wade Mark is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert to dis­close the to­tal li­a­bil­i­ties that re­gion­al in­sur­ance gi­ant Sagi­cor is tak­ing over.

Mark’s ques­tions came from a me­dia re­port that stat­ed that Sagi­cor was pay­ing noth­ing but tak­ing over $8 bil­lion dol­lars in li­a­bil­i­ties in the wake of the CL Fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle.

Mark raised the ques­tion dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the In­sur­ance (Amend­ment) Bill of 2018 which was de­bat­ed dur­ing the Sen­ate sit­ting at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, ear­li­er this week.

Mark al­so said that de­spite four Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee sit­tings, one de­bate and 19 months, the Gov­ern­ment failed to ta­ble and de­bate the amend­ments to the In­sur­ance Bill.

“We are now de­bat­ing a sec­ond set of amend­ments to the same Act and you know what? The reg­u­la­tions have not been laid,” Mark said.

“Af­ter 20 months, the Act num­ber 4 of 2018 has not been laid and what the Min­is­ter tells us now is that in two-months time the law will be pro­claimed,” Mark said.

Mark said he was con­cerned with what the Sen­ate was not be­ing asked to de­bate.

“I be­lieve that we, in this Par­lia­ment, is be­ing tak­en by an ex­ter­nal forces, for a ride and we are be­ing used as a rub­ber-stamp Sen­ate to ac­com­plish oth­er things,” he said.

“But as long as I can breathe and I can re­search, I will ex­pose the shenani­gans of those who have their own ob­jec­tives,” he said.

Mark said chief among his con­cerns was that the Gov­ern­ment made changes to the word­ing of the new Amend­ments in­clud­ing chang­ing for­eign com­pa­ny to for­eign in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

“Why for­eign in­sur­ance com­pa­ny? That is to fa­cil­i­tate the com­pa­ny called Sagi­cor, which is for­eign to us,” he said.

“Again, you can see the dots be­ing con­nect­ed in this mat­ter,” he said.

Mark said he was al­so con­cerned about an­oth­er change, in which the Gov­ern­ment delet­ed the word “au­dit or caused to be au­dit­ed” and in­stead in­sert­ed the words “ex­am­ined or caused to be ex­am­ined”.

“You ask your­self the ques­tion, why would the Min­is­ter want to do that. I no­tice in his con­tri­bu­tion, he did not deal with that mat­ter at all,” he said.

Mark said he did not sup­port the changes to the Act be­cause he be­lieved it was an at­tempt to “wa­ter-down” the orig­i­nal pur­pose of the In­sur­ance Act.