In the business section of BBC of 19 June 2013 there was a headline Deloitte gets one-year New York ban. In the world of global finance it represented a routine report given the vagaries of how business is done today. Then it dawned on the author to question – why is it regulators in Barbados are never driven to censor the entities which they regulate? Is the corporate climate in Barbados so principled as to avoid the censure from those with oversight?
Then there is the association to be made between Deloitte, who is the Judicial Manager of CLICO and PriceWaterhouse (PWC), who acted before as external auditors for CLICO Barbados. Why have we not been asking robust questions of PWC? It seems all of the focus has been directed at Leroy Parris, and yes he should be held to account given his fiduciary role. However, if we want to fully prove what led to the demise of one of the largest privately own conglomerates in the Caribbean, we need to cast the net far and wide.
Under the Companies Act of Barbados CAP.308 Section 150-167, the external auditor derives wide powers to ensure the integrity of the financials of any company regulated under the Act. The realisation that the Deloitte CLICO Forensic Report established that there is a shortfall in the assets of CLICO of about 300 million dollars places PWC under the radar. PWC must be forced to answer whether the erosion of CLICO assets occurred during the period of the Oversight Body – headed by William Layne – and immediately thereafter or whether financials audited by PWC without notes were inaccurate. We must ask the hard questions. After all it is the taxpayers who are being asked to bail CLICO.
In a related development: the Deloitte Judicial Manager (JM) Patrick Toppin submitted their final report last week and to the surprise of many asked the court to seal the report. BU is on record that the CLICO mess will take years to unravel, this recent development confirms it. We may speculate why the JM has request the report to be sealed. From this distance there is one person who stands to benefit if the court agrees to the request.
BIPA has explained that the group is happy with what it was told by the JM this week. A picture of BIPA members with beaming was posted in the local press to confirm, missing was the lawyers who must be a tad happier.
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