PM to hold meeting Wednesday to explain CL affair

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar will be the featured speaker at a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the CLICO financial crisis.

The venue is the Centre Pointe Mall. The meeting will be held with Government Ministers, Members of Parliament, and activists of the People’s Partnership beginning at 5 pm.

Persad-Bissessar will explain what her Government intends to do about the crisis which has threatened to destabilize the economy.

She will speak about the collapse of CLICO's parent company, CL Financial Limited, explain how much money the last Government funnelled into CLICO, and state what her Government intends to do.

She will also talk about the Commission of Enquiry into the CL affair, which she announced in the House of Representatives last Friday. 

The People's Partnership government has inherted the CL crisis from the Manning PNM administration which invested more than $7 billion in the failed company.

Much of that money - about $5 billion - was spent on paying interest for the high-yielding Executive Flexible Premium Annuity (EFPA) with the rest being used to bail out other CL subsidiaries, including CLICO Investment Bank.

Speaking in Parliament the Prime Minister explained the magnitude of the financial problem.

"Today the Government, and therefore the taxpayers of this country, have been called upon to come up with another $16 billion to $19 billion," she stated.

"So what happened to that $7.3 billion? Where did it go? Who are the people who were paid? $7.3 billion dumped. And to make matters worse, what we got in return for the taxpayers? A 49 per cent minority share interest in CLICO, a minority interest, in an insolvent bankrupt company," Persad-Bissessar said.

The government has offered to pay $75,000 to investors and any outstanding balance in equal payments of 20 years at zero per cent interest. That payout of $3.3 billion is coming from tax revenues.

Read the PM's statement: PM Kamla explains CL crisis, says gov't can't pay more