(Trinidad Express) Former CLICO director Hayden Charles was yesterday confronted with a letter from the Central Bank which listed him as the head of the insurance giant’s defunct audit committee.
The non-functional CLICO audit committee has been an issue that has commanded the attention of the enquiry.
The committee, which was established to ensure proper corporate governance was maintained at CLICO, had not functioned as it ought to, Charles testified yesterday.
This was also stated by CLICO’s former corporate secretary Geoffrey Leid who took the witness stand last Friday.
After the 2006 kidnapping and subsequent murder of businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, the audit committee of CLICO never met, Leid had testified.
Naipaul-Coolman held the post of independent chairperson of the audit committee at CLICO.
Leid said Lawrence Duprey, the former executive chairman of CLICO, approached former chief executive officer of BWIA Conrad Aleong to replace Naipaul-Coolman as the audit committee chairperson.
Aleong, however, wanted a remuneration package for the role, and this would have affected his independence, Leid said.
No one ever took over Naipaul-Coolman’s role, Leid said.
Ian Benjamin, the legal representative for the Central Bank, however, yesterday produced a letter from the Central Bank to CLICO identifying Charles as the head of the audit committee.
The letter dated April 24, 2007 from Wendy Ho Sing, the deputy inspector of financial institutions, was sent to Anthony Jones, CLICO’s chief audit executive and head of the insurance giant’s corporate oversight team.
The letter followed a meeting between officials from the Central Bank and CLICO on April 13, 2007.
The Central Bank called the meeting to raise some concerns with CLICO’s operations.
BENJAMIN: Look at the bottom of the first page and you will see one of the concerns is that of the audit committee about which you have spoken. Yes?
CHARLES: Okay, well that is news to me.
BENJAMIN: Tell us what is news to you.
CHARLES: That I am the chair of the audit committee.
BENJAMIN: I thought it might be. So are you saying—because we want to be clear—that you were never told or invited to assume the chairmanship of the audit committee after the regretful demise of Mrs Vindra Naipaul-Coolman?
CHARLES: Yes, that would be true.
Charles yesterday said despite the CLICO board being against the purchase of Jamaican spirits company Lascelles de Mercado, it was “pulled along” into the controversial transaction by executive chairman Lawrence Duprey.
Eventually, Duprey overruled the investment committee’s decision, and US$676 million was paid for the company, Charles said.
