Persistent Bahamas firm wins Trinidad case

(Trinidad Guardian) For­mer CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Lawrence Duprey has been or­dered to pay over US$122 mil­lion in dam­ages to the com­pa­ny’s for­mer sub­sidiary in the Ba­hamas over a failed land de­vel­op­ment in Flori­da.

De­liv­er­ing a 16-page judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim dis­missed Duprey’s de­fence to the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar law­suit in which British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd (Baico) was seek­ing the re­cov­er the mon­ey, which rep­re­sents the dam­ages award­ed to it by the Unit­ed States Bank­rupt­cy Court in the South Dis­trict of Flori­da in Ju­ly last year.

Pro­vid­ed that Duprey does not ap­peal Rahim’s de­ci­sion, the com­pa­ny, based in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas, can move ahead to have Duprey’s lo­cal as­sets seized by the court and auc­tioned off to clear the debt.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Rahim grant­ed Duprey’s lawyers a 28-day stay of judg­ment for them to con­sid­er whether to ap­peal.

As part of the rul­ing, Duprey is al­so re­quired to foot 55 per cent of Baico’s le­gal bill for bring­ing the claim as well as in­ter­est on the judge­ment amount.

In his de­fence, Duprey was chal­leng­ing the US court’s rul­ing, claim­ing it was in breach of nat­ur­al jus­tice as he was not rep­re­sent­ed by an at­tor­ney dur­ing the hear­ings and was not aware of the sta­tus of the case.

But Rahim re­ject­ed Duprey’s claims as he point­ed out that Duprey’s at­tor­ney on­ly with­drew from the US case when it had al­ready reached an ad­vanced stage. He al­so stat­ed that the ev­i­dence showed that Duprey was kept in­formed of the progress of the case, as he was reg­u­lar­ly emailed by court of­fi­cials af­ter his at­tor­ney with­drew.

While Duprey claimed he is not tech savvy and need­ed as­sis­tance in read­ing and re­ply­ing to emails, the ev­i­dence showed that he had com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the court via email dur­ing the hear­ings in Flori­da.

“Con­se­quent­ly, the court finds that the de­fen­dant’s claims of be­ing un­aware of the email were disin­gen­u­ous,” Rahim said.

The pro­ceed­ings in the US were over Duprey’s breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty in the com­pa­ny’s in­vest­ment in the Green Is­land re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment in Osce­o­la Coun­ty, Flori­da.

Baico in­vest­ed US$295 mil­lion in the project which re­sult­ed in over US$100 mil­lion in loss­es. The loss­es forced the com­pa­ny in­to in­sol­ven­cy and led to sub­se­quent mul­ti-na­tion­al in­sol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings. Baico first filed its US law­suit against Duprey and its oth­er ex­ec­u­tives in Sep­tem­ber 2009.

While the ex­ec­u­tives came to out of court set­tle­ments with the com­pa­ny, Duprey, a for­mer di­rec­tor and for­mer chair­man Bri­an Branker con­tin­ued to chal­lenge the claim. Duprey, Branker and their at­tor­neys were ac­tive in the case ini­tial­ly, as they op­posed sev­er­al as­pects of Baico’s claim.

Af­ter Duprey and his le­gal team were ab­sent from the pro­ceed­ings pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly be­tween 2013 and 2015, the com­pa­ny ob­tained a de­fault judge­ment against the duo.

Duprey then chal­lenged the de­fault judge­ment, as he claimed his at­tor­ney had with­drawn for the case and he was not aware of its sta­tus. These ar­gu­ments were re­ject­ed by US Judge Erik Kim­ball in Ju­ly last year.

Duprey did not ap­peal the judge­ment in the US, as he claimed he was pre­vent­ed by health and fi­nan­cial con­straints. Duprey raised the is­sues in his de­fence against the claim be­fore Rahim but they were re­ject­ed as they were not sub­stan­ti­at­ed by ev­i­dence.

Baico was forced to file the lo­cal pro­ceed­ings against Duprey af­ter he moved back to Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out pay­ing the US court-or­dered dam­ages. The lo­cal ac­tion was re­quired as there is no leg­isla­tive arrange­ment for the reg­is­ter­ing US judge­ments in T&T.

Baico was rep­re­sent­ed by An­dre Rud­der and Bryan Mc­Cutcheon, while Vivek Lakhan-Joseph rep­re­sent­ed Duprey.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse af­ter­wards, Lakhan-Joseph said, “Our client has ex­pressed his re­spect­ful con­tention with the ear­li­er High Court de­ci­sion and is se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing the prospect of an ur­gent ap­peal, the strength and mer­its of which he is con­fi­dent in. Mr Duprey has re­it­er­at­ed his un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to ex­on­er­ate him­self from these mat­ters with a view to en­sur­ing his vin­di­ca­tion.”

About CLF Fi­nan­cial

The com­pa­ny be­gan with the found­ing of Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Cli­co) by Lawrence Duprey’s un­cle Cyril. Dur­ing his tenure at the helm, Duprey grew the com­pa­ny in­to one of the largest con­glom­er­ates in the Caribbean, with 65 com­pa­nies in 32 coun­tries across the world.

In 2009, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Cen­tral Bank, took con­trol of the cash-strapped con­glom­er­ate af­ter Duprey and the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tives asked for a bailout.

Be­tween 2011 and 2014, Sir An­tho­ny Col­man held a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of the com­pa­ny and the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU).

Last year, the Gov­ern­ment suc­cess­ful­ly pe­ti­tioned the High Court to wind up the com­pa­ny, as it was still owed most of the over $20 bil­lion that was used for the bailout.

The con­glom­er­ate’s large share­hold­ings in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (Re­pub­lic Bank), West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Wit­co), An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed (OCM) and Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed were lat­er vest­ed in the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIF).

Be­tween Ju­ly and Au­gust, NIF of­fered fixed in­come bonds to cor­po­rate and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens in a dri­ve to raise $4 bil­lion.

The com­pa­ny’s col­lapse al­so led to a num­ber of law­suits from pol­i­cy­hold­ers and in­vestors seek­ing to re­coup their in­vest­ments.