Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General John Jeremie has announced plans to discontinue civil legal proceedings arising from the collapse of CL Financial and its subsidiary Clico, citing billions of dollars spent on legal and professional fees with no criminal prosecutions to show for it.
Jeremie made the disclosure in the House of Representatives on January 16 while laying the long-delayed Sir Anthony Colman report into the failure of the CL Financial group. He said that an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion has been spent on attorney fees and related professional services since the collapse nearly 17 years ago.
The Attorney General criticised the handling of the investigation, saying it was severely under-resourced and at times assigned as few as one or two police officers. He described the probe as ineffective given the scale of what he termed the country’s largest financial collapse.
Jeremie said that while criminal proceedings fall under the authority of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and financial supervision rests with the Minister of Finance and the Central Bank, he has the authority to terminate civil actions and intends to do so to prevent further expenditure of public funds.
He said the State had already spent $28 billion to rescue CL Financial, with billions more paid afterward for legal, accounting and advisory services. According to Jeremie, nearly $400 million was paid to Deloitte and Touche, and overall professional fees in some cases approached half a billion dollars, without resulting in a single charge.
The Attorney General also disclosed that the Colman report, which cost approximately $150 million to produce, had never previously been laid in Parliament and could not be located in several state offices. The report contains extensive material, including thousands of electronic records and forensic financial analyses documenting complex cross-border transactions.
Jeremie said the report recommends police action and describes conduct consistent with a Ponzi-style scheme. He formally tabled the document during the sitting.
The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago relinquished emergency control of Clico in 2022, by which time the insurer had repaid $17.3 billion.
