PORT OF SPAIN – Two new investigations will be launched into the multi-billion-dollar operations of CL Financial and its subsidiaries.
The first will be to find out how Lawrence Duprey transferred shares of a multi-billion-dollar company called Dalco Capital Management Company Ltd to a director, Carlton Reis, for just $99.
The second is to determine how all the profits from the companies under CL World Brands were being injected into CL Financial alone to settle debts of its subsidiaries and not being used to pay back the billions in taxpayers’ money used to bail out the company.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert explained in detail the intricate web of companies that fall under the CLF conglomerate and the many questions that remained unanswered, including: where did all the money go?
The liquidators will now be tasked to follow the money and probe what fishy business has been taking place in the network of companies.
Imbert was speaking at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.
According to Imbert, chairman of the CLICO Policyholders Group Peter Permell has no shares in CL Financial and had, in fact, cashed in his policy with CLICO in 2012.
He noted Reis, the other “mouthpiece”, has said on numerous occasions CL Financial is worth $40 billion, but shares in a company were transferred to his name for just $99.
Imbert said it was discovered through a search of the Company’s Registry that former CLF chairman Lawrence Duprey owned a company called Dalco Capital Management Company Ltd, which was incorporated in 1998.
He said Reis was appointed director of Dalco in 2015, and in January 2016 Duprey transferred his shares in this company to him.
Dalco, he noted, owns 26 per cent of CL Financial, which would make its shares worth some $10 billion, based on the claim by Reis that CLF is worth $40 billion.
“The stamp duty on a transfer of shares worth $10 billion is $50 million. The stamp duty on a transfer of shares worth $99 is 50 cents. So the Ministry of Finance will be investigating this matter to see why a company that is purportedly valued by one of its owners at $40 billion, why the shares in that company were transferred for $99,” said Imbert. (EXPRESS)
