Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank chair­man and sub­se­quent UNC gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Mervyn As­sam, says some of the com­ments about late Cli­co jefe Lawrence Duprey have been very hyp­o­crit­i­cal, since Duprey was crit­i­cised and de­monised dur­ing his life­time.

“I’m sur­prised at some of the com­ments af­ter his death about him be­ing a ‘mag­nate’ and ‘vi­sion­ary’, as he wasn’t so recog­nised dur­ing his life­time. In­stead of giv­ing ku­dos now, some should apol­o­gise for the bad things they said about him dur­ing his life­time be­cause he helped so many peo­ple,” As­sam said yes­ter­day.

Duprey, 89, died last Sun­day at a St James fa­cil­i­ty. He and his fam­i­ly had been liv­ing in T&T for over a year af­ter re­turn­ing from the US. Duprey’s life­time in busi­ness and as­so­ciates here, brought him in­to con­tact with var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties along the way.

Duprey’s bond with Pan­day

Along Duprey’s path, in No­vem­ber 28, 1999, he and then Tid­co chair­man Car­los John—a for­mer CL Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial—were ap­point­ed to then state-air­line BWIA’s board. In May 2000, John was ap­point­ed a min­is­ter in the Bas­deo Pan­day UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

John yes­ter­day said, “It’s no se­cret that he and Mr Pan­day de­vel­oped a close friend­ship and that there was a bond; to the ex­tent that he took a gi­ant, un­prece­dent­ed step to speak on a De­cem­ber 2000 UNC plat­form to sup­port my can­di­da­cy then.

“The heat that he ex­pe­ri­enced in CLF’s board­room there­after, can best be de­scribed as an ‘in­fer­no’. But he stood his ground as he al­ways had the deep courage of his con­vic­tions. Re­gard­less of your views, no one dared chal­lenge him. He was the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er. It would have been cor­po­rate sui­cide to do oth­er­wise. Be­hind that some­what care­free, easy-go­ing out­ward de­meanour, was a hum­ble, gen­er­ous man who was made of ster­ling stuff. In that re­spect, he was con­fi­dent and in­vin­ci­ble.”

John added, “On one oc­ca­sion af­ter a meet­ing, that may not have gone to his lik­ing, he con­fid­ed to me: ‘I am the board.’ He worked ex­treme­ly hard to put his com­pa­ny’s brand on the glob­al stage. He said that be­ing a re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate was ‘think­ing small’. He pos­sessed that re­lent­less de­ter­mi­na­tion for a glob­al pres­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly with An­gos­tu­ra prod­ucts. A mav­er­ick some may say—but clear­ly a man be­fore his time.”

Pan­days mum

There was no re­ply to calls and mes­sages from Pan­day’s wife Oma or his daugh­ter Mick­ela yes­ter­day. In the 2006 tri­al con­cern­ing Pan­day’s in­tegri­ty de­c­la­ra­tion on which he was ful­ly cleared, it was re­vealed that a cheque for the equiv­a­lent of TT$1.3 mil­lion was giv­en as a schol­ar­ship grant to the Pan­days by Duprey for the ed­u­ca­tion ex­pens­es of two of their daugh­ters study­ing in Lon­don. Pan­day said no favours were grant­ed in re­turn. Duprey said he’d nev­er sought “cur­ry favour” in ex­change. Duprey said he’d re­ceived a phone call from Oma Pan­day, in which she asked for the grant. He said his con­ver­sa­tions with her were dif­fer­ent and in­de­pen­dent from those with her hus­band and there were things which he spoke to “Oma about, but not Pan­day.”

Duprey said he had no par­tic­u­lar af­fil­i­a­tion with any one po­lit­i­cal group and al­so gave a schol­ar­ship grant to two chil­dren of NJAC leader Makan­dal Daa­ga, now de­ceased.

The great­est—As­sam

In 1990, As­sam en­tered the pri­vate sec­tor as chair­man of Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank Ltd and lat­er held sev­er­al min­is­te­r­i­al posts with Pan­day’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. As­sam said he had lit­tle to do with Duprey af­ter be­com­ing min­is­ter, as Duprey’s busi­ness is­sues fell un­der the Fi­nance Min­istry and Cen­tral Bank.

“He was unique—no busi­nessper­son ever ac­com­plished in T&T what he did. He is the great­est en­tre­pre­neur the Caribbean has ever seen or per­haps will ever see,” As­sam added.

“I’d told the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (on Cli­co’s col­lapse) that where­as Lawrence’s un­cle was a very fru­gal, cau­tious man, Lawrence was an ex­treme­ly dar­ing en­tre­pre­neur. He took a lot of busi­ness de­ci­sions to ex­pand what his un­cle left and made it an in­ter­na­tion­al con­glom­er­ate—from T&T, Guyana and the Ba­hamas to Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when the 2008 glob­al fi­nan­cial melt­down oc­curred, the com­pa­ny was se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed and he had to go to the then-gov­ern­ment to seek a bailout.”

Mon­teil grieves

Speak­ing of Duprey’s lega­cy, re­tired busi­ness­man An­dre Mon­teil said, “I’m too emo­tion­al for words right now. We’ve lost a pi­o­neer and a vi­sion­ary man who I’ve known since 1981 when I first start­ed at Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd’s Fi­nance di­vi­sion.”

Mon­teil con­tin­ued to work in be­tween over the years at Duprey’s oth­er com­pa­nies. In 2011, for­mer PNM chair­man Con­rad Enill said Mon­teil, who be­came PNM trea­sur­er in 2005, re­signed in 2008 when Mon­teil re­tired from pub­lic life.

I still helped him—Ramesh

For­mer UNC at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who fell out with Pan­day in 2000 over Duprey, once de­liv­ered a sar­cas­tic line, “I do pray ...,” as a jab. Yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said there were po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences be­tween him­self and Pan­day re­gard­ing Ca­roni lands which were sup­posed to be giv­en to sug­ar work­ers, and the is­sue had to do with the rum in­dus­try.

Ma­haraj said de­spite that, Duprey came to him some years ago and Ma­haraj tried to as­sist him with le­gal is­sues.

“I ap­peared on mat­ters he and oth­ers had re­gard­ing Cli­co in the last ten years. There was no doubt Mr Duprey was a great vi­sion­ary and good busi­ness­man. Notwith­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences which may have ex­ist­ed at the time, there can be no doubt he made a con­tri­bu­tion to T&T with his in­sur­ance com­pa­ny which em­pow­ered peo­ple.”