Flashback: CL Financial gave PNM $5Million for election war chest in 2007

The cheque published by the EXPRESS newspaper in June 2009

In June 2009, the Sunday Express published a report stating that that stated that while CL Financial (CLF) was experiencing financial problems it was also bankrolling the PNM's 2007 general election campaign.

The paper published a copy of a cheque for TT$5 million from CLF to the PNM signed by Duprey and other CLF officials and cited sources as saying that the PNM received TT$20 million from CLF for the campaign.

With respect to the $5 million cheque, the paper reported that it was drawn from an account held at Republic Bank, Independence Square in Port of Spain and was endorsed less than a month before the November 5, 2007 election by Rose Janierre, assistant party secretary, and Linus Rogers, PNM elections officer.

The newspaper report stated: "The $5 million Clico payout to the PNM's war chest was made at a time when the country's No 1 insurance company had already been red-flagged with solvency issues, a statutory fund deficit of close to a billion dollars and what financial observers warned were dangerously excessive levels of inter-party transactions within the group."

It added, "If the Manning government had any concerns about the holding company using the country's largest insurer as a lucrative little money machine, it not only kept its own counsel but it lined up at the feeding trough.

"In the middle of this interplay of politics and business stood Andre Monteil, the then group financial director of Duprey's $100 billion business behemoth, his No 1 lieutenant, party treasurer of the incumbent PNM government and the PNM face of the corporate animal known as CL Financial," the Express reported.