$417.6M for legal work on Clico collapse

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice has paid the sum of $346,812,665.33 thus far for work on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the col­lapse of Cli­co.

But the AG’s of­fice has re­ceived an­oth­er $70,860,386.97 in in­voic­es that have not been paid and this amounts to a grand to­tal of $417,673,052.30.

This was part of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s writ­ten re­ply to a ques­tion by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Stu­art Young yes­ter­day.

Young had ref­er­enced the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s state­ment in the Low­er House on Jan­u­ary 16, 2026, that $3 to $4 bil­lion was spent on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the col­lapse of

Cli­co on lawyers and ac­coun­tants.

Young had asked for the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion with re­gard to pay­ments made:

a) the names of the per­sons and/or en­ti­ties that re­ceived pay­ments;

b) the dates/s when each pay­ment was made;

c) the amount paid to each per­son and/or en­ti­ty; and

d) the ser­vice pro­vid­ed for each pay­ment made.

Apart from the AG’s writ­ten re­ply on the over­all to­tal, he stat­ed that it should be not­ed that these in­voic­es on­ly stat­ed in gen­er­al terms the work that was be­ing in­voiced for, us­ing word­ing such as “Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices” with ref­er­ence to the code name used for the Cli­co col­lapse, name­ly “Project Char­lie.”

The AG’s re­ply not­ed that ad­di­tion­al in­voic­es are still be­ing dis­cov­ered from time to time.The re­ply al­so stat­ed, “In ad­di­tion to the ex­pens­es in­curred by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, costs have been sus­tained by the Cen­tral Bank, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, the De­posit In­sur­ance

Cor­po­ra­tion (the liq­uida­tors) and the “Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Fail­ure of CL

Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed, Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank Lim­it­ed, British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, Caribbean Mon­ey

Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed and the Hin­du Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed,” both paid and to be paid, in this mat­ter.”

“The Cen­tral Bank alone would have ex­pend­ed monies in the vicin­i­ty of $500,000,000.00 while the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry’s ex­pens­es would have amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $350,000,000.00.”

There was an ad­di­tion­al cost for the liq­uida­tors. The costs were bro­ken down as fol­lows:

1. Re­cip­i­ent (Joint Liq­uida­tors) - $3,175,492.39 USD

2. Re­cip­i­ent (Grant Thorn­ton) - $43,641.95 TTD

3. Re­cip­i­ent (Grant Thorn­ton) - $321,738.33 USD