THAT CLICO HOLE ...AGAIN!


There was something very interesting about Finance Minister Dookeran's latest statements regarding (what I suppose can loosely be termed) "the CLICO Affair", and that was about his reference to the existance of "ghost accounts". What the heck could he be referring to? What is a "ghost account" exactly?

Now the following is pure conjecture on my part and I don't know that any of it is true. I put it forward as pure speculation. But then, in the absence of full disclosure we are all going to speculate about what is going on:
What if these "ghost accounts" are in fact accounts that were established for certain persons where no money had actually been deposited? In other words, what if, for example, John Smith was holding a certificate of deposit for, say, $10 million with interest at 10 per cent for, say, five years, but this fictional John Smith had never actually deposited $10 million with Clico in the first place? well, this could be classified as an arch-typical "ghost account". You realise, of course, that in such a case John Smith would not only have the capital of $10 million, but be being paid interest of $1 million a year! Is this why the Government does not want to pay interest on those accounts which apparently include the "ghost accounts"? Because they know that a lot of these holders ... or some of them ... are not really entitled to the money in the first place?

So, the next question would have to be why would CLICO (or CL Financial or any CLICO subsidiary) issue such a certificate? Why indeed? A possible and probable answer could be was that it was issued to John Smith for some sort of "services" that he rendered. But what kind of services? Could it be some sort of pay off? Obviously if this was so then it would have to be some sort of pay off. But for what? A bribe? The question is asked open ended, but you can see how it makes sense to ask such a question. Then, if so who was being bribed? And for what?

Now, if John Smith was some sort of public servant or some sort of politician then the whole thing would begin to make a little more sense. So, the next logical question is obviously whose names are on these "ghost accounts"? And if these "ghost accounts" do exist, why has it taken approximately 21 months for this information to come out?

Because make no bones about it, if there are "ghost accounts" this suggests a massive fraud that goes beyond the CLICO executives and could possibly involve certain politicians. But who?

We need to know why CLICO failed. We need to know when CLICO started to fail. We need to know why no red flags went up immediately, or, if they did go up why was nothing done. Who was responsible? Where were the auditors? Why did they apparently say nothing? Why did the Manning Administration decide to bail out CLICO with taxpayers money but not bail out the Hindu Credit Union? What was the difference? Did it have anything to do with the possible fraud inside CLICO? What? Why hasn't any action been taken to freeze the accounts of the CLICO executives while the investigation takes place? This is done all the time in places like the United States where executives find their assets frozen before any charges are brought in order to safeguard their possible dissipation. Why did Dr. Eurich Bob and Claude Mussaib-Ali resign from the CLICO board last year? Did they see certain things that made them very unhappy? We never got a satisfactory explanation for the resignations of these honourable men. Why not?

There are too many unanswered questions that affect too many honest people. But more and more it is beginning to look like there has been a massive cover-up and the present Administration is not being as open and as forthright as they promised that they would be. And we are left with the obvious question: Why? One thing is clear: People are hurting badly!