US plan can pay all monies to Clico stakeholders: Ramesh

Former Attorney General Ramesh L. Maharaj has written to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar advising her that there is a way to pay all the monies due to CLICO depositors within a few months at no extra cost to the Government.

In the letter, Maharaj, who is the legal representative for one group of Clico stakeholders, said an American group has presented such a plan to the cabinet team appointed to meet with stakeholders to try to find an alternative to the plan presented in the 2011 budget.

"This group presented a plan in which, at no extra cost to the Government than the US $600 million that was allocated in the budget by the Government to Clico, the monies due under the respective policies can be paid to policyholders within a few months," Maharaj told the Prime Minister.

"This plan we understand was put forward as the best plan since the other plans which were put forward meant that the policyholders would not get their monies for three, seven or ten years," Maharaj stated. The plan involves sale of bonds on Wall Street and using the proceeds of that bond to pay off the depositors.

Maharaj claimed that the government has not made a proper evaluation of the Clico assets and has not produced to a valuation of the assets to policyholders.

Clico is part of the CL conglomerate that owns Caribbean Nitrogen Company and Methanex Trinidad. Maharaj said those companies alone would have benefited from favourable commodity prices in the past year.

In addition there are other very profitable CL companies including Republic Bank, which Maharaj noted made a profit of one billion dollars last year. He said other subsidiaries are in an equally sound financial positions.