CLICO Bank must repay

PORT-OF-SPAIN  – The High Court has ordered the now defunct CLICO Investment Bank (CIB) to repay a TT$700 million (US$116.6 million) deposit to the National Insurance Board (NIB) less than two weeks after Parliament approved legislation blocking policyholders from engaging in legal action to access their money in CL Financial subsidiaries like the Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) and CIB.
The ruling centred on the definition of an Investment Note Certificate (INC) and whether such deposits were guaranteed under the January 2009 Trinidad and Tobago government multi-billion dollar bail-out of the cash-strapped CL Financial Group.
The INC is a short-term deposit designed to give customers a safe haven for their investments above market rates.
“An agreement was never honoured, it’s just words you put on a piece of paper hoping to give parties comfort. It has no reasonable meaning, just a bunch of words strung together. You cannot dress up a deposit and change it in law. It cannot be done this way. No one said to us (by the way) it’s not a security but an investment,” said attorney Deborah Peak, who represented the NIB. (CMC)
 
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