PORT?OF?SPAIN – Lawrence Duprey was concerned there may have been an informer in the boardroom of CL Financial and as a matter of precaution decided to keep the sale of CLICO Energy to a foreign company a private matter, former CL corporate secretary Gita Sakal said Thursday.
Sakal made the statement while being led in evidence by her attorney Justin Phelps at the Commission of Enquiry into the collapse of CL Financial and the Hindu Credit Union (HCU).
A total of 84 million shares of CLICO Energy which amounted to a 51 per cent stake in the company went to a Barbados-registered company called Proman Holdings after a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2009 with the former PNM government for a billion-dollar bailout of CL Financial.
Sakal explained how the controversial sale of CLICO Energy went.
On January 23, 2009 former CL Financial chairman Lawrence Duprey came to Trinidad to meet with then minister of finance Karen Nunez-Tesheira to discuss the financial difficulties of the conglomerate, Sakal said.
Sakal said she spoke to Duprey while he was in Trinidad and they agreed for her to talk to Joseph Cassidy, owner of Proman Holdings, to arrange a possible sale of CLICO Energy.
CL Financial held a 34 per cent stake in CLICO Energy while CLICO owned a 17 per cent stake and Proman Holdings held 49 per cent.
Sakal said she met Cassidy at the Proman golf tournament in Tobago and held private discussions with him.
On February 2, days after the MOU was signed, a board meeting was held with Sakal, Cassidy, Claus Cronberger, managing director of CLICO Energy and Proman’s attorney Jeff Chambers to discuss the sale of the “only asset of any real value”, Sakal said.
That meeting was held at the boardroom of the Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd company at Point Lisas.
Sakal said the reason the sale was kept secret was because Duprey raised concerns about a “leak” at the CL Financial board level.
(Trinidad Express)