My head is full of CLICO and polygraphs

Mar 15, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

Some issues never go away. Instead they attract a host of questions, some of which never seem to yield satisfactory answers. There are two such issues today — the CLICO (Guyana) affair and the polygraph tests.
The latter is all but over, because President Bharrat Jagdeo has signalled that the manner in which these rounds of tests are being conducted is a waste of time and resources. And besides, the results may be compromised.

Given his signalled reservations, one can safely conclude that polygraph testing would be put on hold, because in Guyana, whenever the Head of State signals his objection, the people involved would take note. He himself said as much when he met with the media prior to his departure for Belize for the Caricom Intercessional summit.

I came across a most amazing finding about polygraph testing the other day while browsing the internet. The information is found in some 160 pages documenting the particular test.
The issue involved an American store that had lost $500, presumably stolen by an employee. The store, to test the accuracy of polygraphs, summoned four experts, each unknown by the other. The head of the store then invited each of the experts to test the ‘suspects’. In response to questions, he indicated the prime suspect to each of the experts.

They went to work on the suspects and independently they all concluded that the prime suspect was guilty. They all asked the appropriate questions to reach the conclusion. At the end of the exercise they submitted their findings to the storeowner – suspect X was the guilty party.
This is all well and good. The only thing was that the store had already found the guilty party, and he was not Suspect X. The second discovery was that the results were influenced by the suggestion from the storeowner.

When I read this I said to myself that many innocent people may have been screwed by polygraph tests because the persons recommending the tests had either deliberately or inadvertently suggested something that might have influenced the findings.
The second thing is that this time around there was selective choice for the tests. Commissioner-General Khurshid Sattaur sought to justify the selection by saying that he wanted the people who interfaced with the public to be tested. The cost of the exercise was of no concern. I now think about the fate of those who refused the test. There are going to be no more tests because President Jagdeo says so, but those who mandated the tests are not going to be happy.

Such tests should be conducted in small groups from the top to the bottom. The Commissioner-General should have submitted himself for the tests. But that is a done issue.
The CLICO affair has sparked queries and raised suspicions. The Guyana Government moved to the courts to secure the assets of CLICO (Guyana) when the local company realised that one of the recipients of its investment, CLICO (Bahamas), could not find its money.

Some people feel that the Government should have moved from the time the Trinidad Government took control of CL Financial, the parent company of the CLICO enterprises. Two nights ago, during a spirited discussion, I proclaimed that perhaps when the danger flags went up CL Financial decided to make every CLICO entity in the various countries an independent entity. That was some six weeks ago. Perhaps the Government should have moved since then, although there is no guarantee that the courts would have approved the motion as it did on February 25 last.

One school of thought is that there was crookedness involved in the decision by New Building Society to help bail out CLICO (Guyana) by buying the company’s shares in the Berbice Bridge. It is now known that NBS paid $1.4 billion for those shares.
A question that I am repeatedly asked is: “Since CLICO (Guyana) was collapsing, why did NBS rush to bail it out, knowing that Government would have taken over the company and it could have bought those shares from the government?”

NBS had initially refused to invest in the Bridge, so its decision to do so now is viewed with suspicion. Dr Nanda Gopaul told me that NBS, with its immense liquidity, needed to invest if it were to pay its subscribers the interest they expected. He said that the decision was unanimous.
However, the suspicion is that NBS bailed out CLICO because there were certain big ones who needed their money, and in a hurry. If this is the case then something irregular happened.

I am not one to believe in a conspiracy theory, so I will await the investigation that has been launched into the assets of CLICO (Guyana). There are 1,197 uncashed cheques totalling $575 million. I do not know the owners of these cheques, and I doubt that I ever will.
What I do know is that the Judicial Manager has said that she intends to keep CLICO (Guyana) profitable, and that no investor or depositor will lose money. I also know that many people have money tied up in that company, and that at one stage teachers were asked to cease contributing to whatever policies they had in the company.

Private hospitals and pharmacies were not honouring CLICO cards or CLICO cheques. The Commissioner of Insurance says that this is about to change. I hope so, because many teachers and others of that ilk cannot afford private hospitals on their own.
It is going to be a happy day when everyone gets their money, and an even happier day when Guyana manages to retrieve the money it invested in CLICO (Bahamas). Most of that money was contributed by the National Insurance Scheme, some $6.9 billion.

There are critics of that investment by the NIS, but the other day an analysis of the statement revealed that payments by the scheme were some $500 million more than money it collected from contributors. It meant that earnings from investments kept the scheme going.
The judge has not authorised a liquidation of CLICO (Guyana) so the company may be resurrected after the depositors have been paid. Wishful thinking? Who knows?

---

---