The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is to be com­mend­ed for the pub­li­ca­tion of the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of the Hin­du Cred­it Union and the CL Fi­nan­cial Group, and for ter­mi­nat­ing all un­pro­duc­tive civ­il lit­i­ga­tion. Col­man’s re­port was sub­mit­ted in 2016 and not made pub­lic. Per­haps its pub­li­ca­tion was de­layed to avoid com­pro­mis­ing any on­go­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The AG con­firmed that the Re­port cost the coun­try $150 mil­lion, in­clu­sive of fees paid to Com­mis­sion­er Sir An­tho­ny Col­man and sup­port­ing at­tor­neys. He al­so re­vealed that the State spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $28 bil­lion res­cu­ing CL Fi­nan­cial and its sub­sidiaries, with a fur­ther $3 bil­lion to $4 bil­lion spent in sub­se­quent years on le­gal, ac­count­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters linked to the col­lapse. He al­so point­ed out that this was not the fi­nal bill, as the liq­uida­tor’s cost is not in­clud­ed. We note that the liq­uida­tor’s costs should be borne by as­set sales, not the State.

Since much of the $28 bil­lion was paid to sin­gle-pre­mi­um an­nu­i­tants/pol­i­cy­hold­ers, the AG ought to have dis­closed how much of that mon­ey was re­cov­ered from the liq­ui­da­tion of the Group’s as­sets. He said that the civ­il suits have been cost­ly and he in­tends to end them, not­ing that there was a “le­gal feed­ing fren­zy…half a bil­lion dol­lars” was spent with noth­ing to show, and a “joke in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The State’s con­trol of CLF Group spanned three po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions, start­ing in 2009 and end­ing with the ap­point­ment of a liq­uida­tor in 2018. The AG re­ferred to an in­ner cir­cle of golfers and wealthy in­di­vid­u­als be­ing in­volved in the le­gal feed­ing fren­zy, but did not em­u­late Ms Robin­son-Reg­is’ bold step in 2016 of dis­clos­ing the names of the at­tor­neys that were paid as part of the COE and their fees, two of whom are cur­rent­ly chair­men of State com­pa­nies. While he must be com­mend­ed for pub­licly de­clar­ing his de­ci­sion to end civ­il mat­ters, the fail­ure to give fur­ther and bet­ter par­tic­u­lars leads one to con­clude that both ad­min­is­tra­tions seem to be us­ing the same play­book of lim­it­ed dis­clo­sure to gain po­lit­i­cal mileage.

We hope that this is not all that the AG has to say on this mat­ter and that, in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, he will pro­vide fur­ther and bet­ter par­tic­u­lars on some of the mat­ters raised, as it is un­like­ly that any FOIA re­quest will re­veal the ex­pen­di­ture de­tails of each ad­min­is­tra­tion’s term.

The Paria COE cost $15 mil­lion, with promis­es of pay­ment to af­fect­ed fam­i­lies that nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. This fig­ure does not in­clude the le­gal costs of the state-owned Paria. The en­quiry in­to the Point Fortin high­way project, which is yet to start, has al­ready cost tax­pay­ers $11 mil­lion. The en­quiry in­to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup cost $31.8 mil­lion. Ude­cott’s en­quiry cost tax­pay­ers $46.2 mil­lion, ex­clud­ing Ude­cott’s cost. The Las Al­turas en­quiry cost $24.5 mil­lion and does not in­clude the le­gal costs of HDC and Ude­cott, or the le­gal fees of the Com­mis­sion­ers, which the State has to bear in the suc­cess­ful le­gal chal­lenges to the same.

It is hoped that this AG will con­tin­ue in this vein and dis­close the le­gal costs of all civ­il suits brought by the State un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion and the last by state en­ter­pris­es, the at­tor­neys paid and de­cide if they should con­tin­ue in this gua­va sea­son. More im­por­tant­ly, crim­i­nal charges should be brought against all er­rant man­agers to re­in­force the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance.