Dear Editor,
I write in response to a comment posted in your online edition of September 22 in response to Mr Bisram’s letter, ‘Clico investors don’t care who addressed them; they want their money back’ (SN, September 22). The comment posted by ‘Bald Eagle’ was, “Did the T&T government knowingly allow Clico (TT) to violate insurance regulations there thus resulting in TT clients losing money? NO! So what the TT government is doing is actually helping TT Clico clients, which is diferent from what the GY government is doing: it is making up for its boo-boo!” The stance taken in last week’s Business Page also seems to support a view that Trinidad’s conduct has been superior to Guyana’s in this matter.
In fact, Clico (Trinidad) was in breach of the Trinidad & Tobago Insurance Act 1980 for several years in a row due to the failure to pledge sufficient assets to meet its statutory fund requirement. As the attached extract from the Trinidad Guardian shows [article provided] Clico (Trinidad) had a statutory fund deficit of TT$64.7M in 1995, and by 1999 the statutory fund deficit had grown to the tune of TT$894M. Little wonder that eleven years without intervention later, the deficit now amounts to TT$12B.
Yours faithfully,
Patrick van Beek
