CLICO fully liquidated, but NIS still out $$B

Latest News

‘With hands on oil money, Govt. ditches promise to set up Petroleum Commission’ -Shurwayne Holder
Oil minister lashes PNC for failing to commit to renegotiation of Exxon deal while Gov’t refuses to do same
Drug trade putting tremendous strain on security forces – Min. Benn
New Cotton Field Secondary School to cost $1.7B
Shadow foreign minister calls out CARICOM over silence in face of recent aggression by Venezuela

CLICO fully liquidated, but NIS still out $$B

Oct 18, 2013 News

…outstanding option is litigation in The Bahamas, T&T – Dr Luncheon

The expenditure of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is more than its income and the entity is awaiting the outcome of the Court cases in the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago, to see if it can recover the approximately $5.2B still impaired as a result of the CLICO fallout.
This is according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, who also is Chairman of NIS and was at the time lamenting the financial situation of the scheme in relation to its income.
CLICO (Guyana) has already been liquated and the money secured from the sale of its assets has been paid out to more than four thousand policyholders.
NIS, however, is still to recover the more than $6B it had invested in CLICO.
According to Dr Luncheon, “The biggest outstanding option is the litigation in the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago.”
CLICO (Guyana) had reportedly invested some US$34M in the Bahamian counterpart and that entity had been ordered liquidated.
In 2010, the CLICO Bahamas Liquidator reported that his “preliminary view of the documentation suggests that policies were never issued by CLICO Bahamas. Moreover, the premiums received from Guyana and Suriname were never paid to CLICO Bahamas.
“It appears that the funds were remitted directly to a bank account held in the name of CLICO Bahamas at Ocean Bank, Miami, Florida, and to another account held by the company in Trinidad.”
In his third report to the Bahamian Supreme Court on the life and health insurer’s liquidation, Craig A. ‘Tony’ Gomez, the Baker Tilly Gomez accountant and partner, said the US$34M and US$15.5M claims submitted by CLICO Guyana and CLICO Suriname had not been approved.
“After further consultation, I have rejected the above claims received from Guyana and Suriname,” Gomez said.
Guyana had appealed the matter which is still pending, but to date Guyana is yet to receive any of the money invested by CLICO (Guyana) including more than US$34M belonging to NIS.
This past week Financial Analyst, Christopher Ram, in his writings on the NIS said that indecision is not the only bugbear facing the Scheme and that bad decisions just happen to be the flip side of the same coin. He said that for years now, the Scheme has lost income on a deposit investment of some $6B in the failed CLICO.
He said that, “Almost as a set-off it was given the CLICO building, bringing the investment and accrued income down to around $5.2B.”
According to Ram, “neither the Chairman nor the Minister of Finance under whose portfolio the Scheme falls has said anything about the recovery of this sum…If that sum has to be written-off the Scheme’s reserves would take a huge dent.”
Ram urges that a decision be taken on the CLICO receivable, since keeping it on the books seems increasingly meaningless.

1 thoughts on “CLICO fully liquidated, but NIS still out $$B”

Cockspur October 18, 2013 at 4:49 pm

Court case in de bahamas? dat is like de Roger Khan investigation on ice!

Comments are closed.

Tennis Association applauds historic GYD $8 billion allocation to the sports sector in the 2025 National Budget

‘Govt. must come clean on gas-to-energy project’

– spending US$2B on a project without financial, environmental studies is criminality at its worst – WPA Kaieteur... more

OAS Secretary General Election and renewed OAS Consensus

Antiguan Barbudan Ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- The upcoming election... more

Sanctity, sanctity, sanctity – an era of infamy

Hard Truths by GHK Lall Kaieteur News – Something strange happened, while I was reflecting on Guyana’s President... more

Latest News