T&T Finance Minister is possible conflict of interest

A report in the Sunday Guardian suggests Trinidad & Tobag's Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira has been in a conflict of interest regarding her role as the state official who presided over the billion-dollar bailout of the CL Financial group.

The paper said she was doing this while she owned shares in the conglomerate. Nunez-Tesheira has not disclosed that fact or explained why her shares were not held in a blind trust.

According to the Guardian CL Financial’s official filing with the Registrar General’s office reveals that the minister owned 10,410 ordinary shares in the CL Financial group. It said the Finance Minister’s name is 289th on the alphabetical list of 325 shareholders in the document, which is signed by CL's corporate secretary, Gita Sakal, the paper reported.

The documents also reveal that as at September 7, 2008, CL Financial’s total indebtedness in respect of all mortgages and charges, which are required to be registered with the Registrar under the Companies Act, amounted to $208 million and 134 million euros, the Guardian said.

Nunez-Tesheira confirmed that she owned the shares, which she inherited from her late husband Russell Tesheira, a former national footballer. He was a top insurance salesmen of Clico.

When news of the CL crisis first broke at the end of January the minister strenuously denied allegations made by Opposition politicians that her family acted on privileged information and withdrew $2.1 million from the CL subsidiary, Clico Investment Bank (CIB), which has been dissolved as part of the deal to rescue CL.

She responded that she withdrew funds but had no advance knowledge of what was going on, explaining that she had heard about CL's difficulties from her sister, who works in the banking sector, and from what was "in the public domain". Her transactions were completed on December 30, 2008, before she was formally briefed on the issue by Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams on January 14, she said.

But when she answered the opposition questions in Parliament and disclosed her transactions she made no mention of her shares and the possible conflict of interest.