Inquiry revelations

Indeed, on consecutive days we have expressed our opinion here on separate items which the Inquiry has exposed. The week began with the Commission taking evidence on the Hindu Credit Union and then moved to Clico, where, as a carryover from the previous week’s dramatic news of the changing of attorneys who were representing the Ministry of Finance, both the Commission, and the public were readjusting to the business at hand.

First we had former Minister of Finance, Karen Nunez-Teshiera, who had presided over the Clico Bailout initiative in January 2009. The feisty Mrs Teshiera flatly denied ever hugging and kissing HCU president Harry Harnarine in South Africa in 2002. However, she did admit that Harry and the HCU had helped to fund her election campaign in 2007 when she won her seat in parliament and was subsequently appointed Minister of Finance. In that position, former Prime Minister Patrick Manning had asked her “to try to help” the then beleaguered HCU and she met with Mr Harnarine, but did not help him or his cause, saying, basically, that she did not trust him, and in any case, the campaign support did not necessarily require a pay back.

The following day, the auditor for the failed HCU and its group of companies was before the Commission. Mr Chanka Seeterram admitted to concealing losses of $31 million and $150 million in his audit. In responding to the astonished attorneys questioning him, he admitted that he had followed no known accounting procedure in hiding these losses, but had done it “for the greater good”, in order to prevent a total collapse of the HCU. While Mr Seetarram denied the press reports that he “had cooked the books”, saying he reviewed the figures and took decisions based upon what he saw, there is no doubt in our mind that even if he was not the cook, he did approve the recipe. Our calls for comment from the accounting profession on these revelations have borne fruit and ICATT has, in a release, stated they are examining the issue.

Comment on the foregoing had not died down when suddenly the witness statement of Mr Lawrence Duprey, the head of Clico, CLF and miscellaneous entities involved in the Clico debacle, was published in the media. Aside from the furor being raised as to who and how the statement reached the media, Mr Duprey’s comments about himself and his senior management staff were revealing in themselves. While management had, in earlier stages of the Inquiry, blamed Mr Duprey for the decisions taken that were responsible for Clico’s eventual crisis, he turned the blame back upon them, and sought to describe himself more as a victim.

Last Thursday’s evidence by former Home Construction Ltd. (Clico’s housing development arm) head Anthony Fifi, provided further insight into how the collapsing Clico/ CLF organisation rewarded its senior people. We are no longer shocked at the hundreds of millions some of these people were receiving even as people were losing their money at Clico.

On Friday we heard more about huge spending when money indeed flowed like water.

We watch with bated breath as to whether Mr Duprey will appear and face cross-examination on the contradictions between his account of events and those given by his former Board colleagues.