It seems that the policy holders were led like lambs to the slaughter. Like the Trade Confirmers clients, Sharma’s clients and no one was made to pay for these criminal acts. It seems that when locals invest they are taken for all that they have by unscrupulous companies. The Government watch dogs seem to be totally incompetent and to pass legislation to protect themselves from negligence is scandalous to say the least.

When the dust has settled, Barbadians will have no confidence in investing in these get rich schemes from these so called safe companies. This would be a very bitter pill to swallow and the lesson learnt is to TRUST NO ONE OR ANY GOVERNMENT IN POWER that is promoting such a scheme.

As long as Government ministers and private company CEO’s are allowed get away with robbing their clients of their monies there will never be any Justice served. It is sad that every few years this disgusting serpent will raise its head again posing as a legitimate business waiting for its prey.

Overlooked in all this mess is the role that the Supervisor of Insurance played in the collapse of CLICO.

Unfortunately when unqualified individuals get patronage plums from Gov’t with oversight of important industries negative results should be expected.

The Bajan phrase comes to mind “Monkey Handling Gun”

Even the clerks working at CLICO knew that the Executive Flexible Premium Annuities were fraudulent pieces of paper and when the clerks refused to handle these pieces of paper CLICO fired them. Those who were happy to defraud the public were rewarded with big salaries, big bonuses and even bigger cars.

Ah yes the sweet rewards that come from robbing widows and orphans.

Then again CLICO long had a reputation for firing unmarried female employees who became pregnant and gave birth. Of course CLICO did not fire any men who impregnated anybody, and they did not fire women who had abortions. And all while this nastiness was going on pur dear PM Sweet Cakes was their lawyer.

And now we are expected to bail out CLICO.

Even while nobody has sought to recover any of the money paid in monster salaries to CLICO executives (and their lawyer Sweet Cakes)

The information provided in the news stories this week suggests that the special forensic audit is merely to investigate the movement of funds that is missing between the various Clico companies only, ie. intra CIL group and inter CLICO related companies only. The Parrises and the Thompsons and the Arthurs, etc. are home scot free. There will be no investigation, no audit of monies paid from CLICO to these entities. The cover up has already been effected by the brief parameters of the forensic audit that have been released so far. Indeed, the fine print might well find that the remit for the audit may be even more limited than I’ve suggested above. I’d be most grateful if someone with the necessary knowledge would prove me wrong about the above.

As far as I read it, there will be no scope in that audit to investigate any moneys paid to parties and individuals for political campaigning here and in the Eastern Caribbean islands; looking the other way in terms of regulating CLICO; the payment of exorbitant fees to prominent lawyers including David Thompson; the exorbitant bonuses paid to CLICO big-ups and their personal companies; etc. There is therefore no provision made for identifying what might have been a substantial portion in the hemorrhage of CLICO funds over the years and those of us who are asking for justice to be brought to the main culprits who engineered CLICO’s collapse by their greed and the use of property bought out of CLICO funds for defraying the pay out to policy holders and other debtors, will find out that this is definitely not on the cards.

There will be a lot of talk but nothing will happen to the CLICO principals and their carefully and expensively bought political benefactors.

The carefully chosen JM has done a good job.

David not that not true the Barbados business could have sent out all they want. All they have to do to get around the exchange control is attribute funds to shareholders dividends/ Investment in parent company. The right paper work bypasses exchange controls. Every year with sagicor/bl&p/lime the overseas share holders are paid in us ( if legally allowed or their own local currency which is convert from the us dollar dividend payout). so C&W worldwide get a near 30-35 million us dividend payout each year. bl & p majority owner emera would have gotten a 40% stake in the bl&p total dividend last year. The right paper work with any transaction will bypass exchange control once the banks have enough us to send out.

No i saying that corporation have easier access to paper work which will bypass exchange controls. elites also have access but it slight harder to move the money. The transaction are monitored and can used in forensic audit. The bank used to keep records for 10 years don’t remember if it is shorter now or not. Money transfer are easy to track once you have access to the bank record. but for that to happen you need to subpoena both end of the transaction to make sure it didn’t start/end somewhere else

@anthony

The flaw in your thinking is that your are not filtering as a person would who is scamming. It would be a legit transaction for the Regional CLICO Office to fund projects at its satellite branches, construction as an example. Of course it would have to secure Central Bank approval but the rub would be in how the monies are utilized at the satellite branches.

If the dots are followed diligently they will lead to Dodds.

The CLICO scam is unique in Barbados in that the Government of the day apparently openly undertook to actually REPAY those debtors fleeced in the scam very early on in the game as compared with the then government’s reactions to the persons losing their savings or equities in the Trade Confirmer’s and other earlier debacles.

The CLICO scam is unique in that there is good anecdotal evidence that CLICO’s modus operandi was to make Governments political personages and Parties throughout the region beholden to it through the provision of huge amounts of largesse for personal and Party gratification. There is no indication that this was the modus operandi of the other big entities that fell earlier.

The Supervisors of Insurance was probably not as culpable in the almost non regulation of CLICO’s apparent excesses as was the Ministers of Finance. The SOI is after all a creature of the MInister of Finance.

Correlate the first two indications above and see that it is almost certain that the official reaction and exclusions from investigation will have more to do with the second paragraph than any concern for bilked investors.

David

I hope that you are aware that the Supervisor of Insurance is a public officer who is independent on paper only. Like many public officers the Supervisor of Insurance has an independent regulatory role but that independence is often overridden by ministerial edit with or without the necessary legal authority.

Let me give you an example. People who breed mosquitos on their properties; create nuisances; or otherwise infringe the Health Services regulations are subject to criminal proceedings instituted by the Chief Environmental Health Officer for the particular district. In reality, the Chief Environmental Health Officer’s professional determination is overridden by the Minister of Health. Mind you many times the Inspector is bribed with a few pounds of pork from a stinking pig farm like that at Rock hHll, St. Thomas.

If public officers ever venture to conscientiously carry out their professional duty without reference to a minister, who in most cases, have no role those officers would be transferred or worse yet they would never see another promotion.

Have you ever wondered why the Director of Public Prosecutions, Charles Leacock, who is an extremely capable lawyer, has not been promoted to judge but has seen several lesser mortals bypass him. Well if you have ever wondered: I am wondering too.

David

Everybody is looking to somebody else to be Alexander the Great to cut the gordian knot. You would be surprised how many people call me to expose corruption that they have personal knowledge of but are afraid to blow the whistle.

Since December 31, 2007 the Public Service Act makes it an offence to know of wrongdoing, including criminal wrongdoing, and not report it. However, there is one drawback, you must report the wrongdoing in accordance with the guidelines but to date no guidelines have been published.

We have an instance where the Chief Marshal admitted, to the Barbados Today, that they have not complied with the rules to call in the Police and the Director of Finance for Marshals who have misappropriated funds that they collected. The head of department is required by the Financial Rules to inform the Police and Director of Finance.

Before we go off accusing the Chief Marshal of not reporting the misappropriations in accordance with the Rules: he is not the head of department. That honour goes to the Registrar of the Supreme Court who sometimes acts as a judge of the High Court.

I also know of one instance where a marshal reported to the Registrar that his superior officer had returned a warrant to the court with an affidavit saying that a person could not be found. The marshals were able to find him to serve two summonses. It is obvious that the affidavit which was sworn and returned to the court constituted perjury. But so far the officer has not been made to account for the offence.

It would that we like it so!

CLICO & SHEEP

There is saying…… “You are a bunch of sheep”

-you are afraid to speak up for yourselves, afraid to come forward and say what’s on their minds. You are shy, meekish, vulnerable and you simply act cowardly.
-sheep (other than the animal itself) also means a person(s) lacking intelligence or common sense. Same as knucklehead, airhead, nitwit etc.

It would appear that this quote is especially applicable in Barbados, particularly in reference to the islands know BLACK BELLY version.

Once a thriving, organized, reputable and law-abiding country under the guidance of Britain, the country since independence and BLACK LEADERSHIP has wow-fully lapsed into a third world country, stagnant, corrupt and failing society. I hear the saying “we can see the light at the end of the tunnel”, it would appear to be a small nearly burnt out candle at the end of an extremely long and narrowing tunnel. Can anarchy be far away.

“Once a thriving, organized, reputable and law-abiding country under the guidance of Britain, the country since independence and BLACK LEADERSHIP has wow-fully lapsed into a third world country, stagnant, corrupt and failing society”
So very true, Wily Coyote!!
This state of affairs does not augur well for future FDI or access to low cost foreign loans.

A friend of mine who is very educated invested a lot of money in CLICO. I asked her how a sophisticated woman like her could have invested so much money in a company headed by LEROY PARRIS. Her response was that she was drawn to the high rate of return. People forgot their commonsense.

I am in two minds rather my tax dollars should be used to repay CLICO investors when Leroy Parris is still not being held accountable and is still socialising with cream of this society. So he is no leper in DLP circles.

I need to hear from Oliver Jordan if the friendship between him and Leroy is clouding his judgement. Deloitte has been paid 1.3 million already. I see Terrance Thornhill on DLPTV now as a chairman of the Enterprise Growth Fund.

Heads need to roll for this before taxpayers dollars are doled out. Assets of Leroy Parris need to be seized, all the phony companies set up for him by the dead king like Brandlee which lists Faye Wharton Parris and Mara Thompson as directors need to be investigated as well as Families First. The DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY needs also to be investigated as Wikileaks alleges that Peter Wickham told US officials that CLICO gave the DLP BDS34 MILLION DOLLARS for their last campaign.

Prodigal Son; Where did you find a Wikileaks allegation about CLICO payments to the DLP?

When was Terrance Thornhill made Chairman of EGFL?

CCC; Your logic, or lack thereof, often astounds.

I can’t believe what I am reading now.

When I said a long, long time ago that the Supervisor of Insurance, the chicken man, and by extension his boss Arthur should be held responsible for the fiasco that is clico, I got ‘buse stink. Even the blog thought that I was crazy.

The Audit firm which did CLICO’s yearly audit should also be held accountable. They too failed to do their jobs properly thus leading to misrepresentation of the company’s true financial position.

If you are going to lock up Leroy Parris, then also lock up the former Supervisor of Insurance, the former Barbados Labour Party PM and the Seniors of the Audit firm which did CLICO’s audit every single year and reported that nothing was wrong. They all failed not only CLICO’s policy holders but all the citizens of Barbados as well

CCC. I can’t believe that at last you have written something that partially makes a modicum of sense. Bravo!

We should do this and we should do that we should a lot of things. What is required to DO is getting information which to date has been coming in drips and drabs from those in the know.

@All… With regards to “Machiavelli for Dummies”, I’m thinking the first chapter should focus on why those beside us so want us to fail.

Hmmmmm…

checkit,

Be careful downloading from the wikileaks site but I read it on line. I dont know when Terrence Thornhill was appointed but I saw him on DLP TV last week and the news item said that he was the chairman. You never know what this damn lying party is up to.

@David: “It one word: GREED It is a universal problem

@David: “Do you think it is any coincidence that the CLICO issue is a regional one?

No.

But I do find it interesting how few leaders will dare speak to this problem….

@What is This? “Are they in a sinmilar[sic] glass house as the government, and therefore can’t throw any stones?

Never be afraid of throwing stones.

You can learn a lot from launching mass and observing the impacts….

Prodigal on wrote the following:

The DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY needs also to be investigated as Wikileaks alleges that Peter Wickham told US officials that CLICO gave the DLP BDS34 MILLION DOLLARS for their last campaign.
********
When asked to provide a source he wrote the following
“Be careful downloading from the wikileaks site but I read it on line.”

Hey Prodigal, I heard that you were the biggest liar in Barbados.
My source? I read it online

Prodigal Son

Could you point us to correct memo. There quite a few to search thru