Govt reaches settlement with Proman over Clico Energy

An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has reached an agree­ment with the Swiss com­pa­ny, Pro­man, to set­tle the Cli­co En­er­gy case, on terms favourable to the coun­try, a se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The of­fi­cial did not pro­vide de­tails of the set­tle­ment, but this news­pa­per’s es­ti­mate of the con­test­ed amount is that Pro­man would have paid up­ward of US$150 mil­lion to the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­count at the Cen­tral Bank.

The source, who re­quest­ed that his name not be used be­cause he was not au­tho­rised to make a state­ment on the is­sue, was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the Cli­co En­er­gy mat­ter, fol­low­ing the state­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, that the Gov­ern­ment did not in­tend to pur­sue civ­il cas­es re­lat­ed to the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire in 2009.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, as he laid the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse, Je­re­mie said that as the guardian of the pub­lic in­ter­est of the coun­try, he could not di­rect the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to stop crim­i­nal cas­es against CL Fi­nan­cial.

“I can, how­ev­er, end civ­il pro­ceed­ings, and I pro­pose to do so now in a cost-ef­fec­tive man­ner, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that the state has com­menced some of these pro­ceed­ings and might be re­quired to meet some rea­son­able costs to ex­it the pro­ceed­ings,” Mr Je­re­mie said.

The Cli­co En­er­gy mat­ter in­volves the sale of the com­pa­ny by for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, the late Lawrence Duprey, to Pro­man on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009, just days af­ter he signed the Jan­u­ary 30, 2009, mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing by which the Gov­ern­ment agreed to bail out Cli­co, British Amer­i­can Trinidad (BAT), Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) and Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers.

Duprey sold CL Fi­nan­cial’s 51 per cent stake in Cli­co En­er­gy to Pro­man for US$46.5 mil­lion, a trans­ac­tion that was chal­lenged in the High Court.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021, Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad or­dered that Pro­man re­turn the 51 per cent of Cli­co En­er­gy to CL Fi­nan­cial; pro­vide an ac­count of all div­i­dends and/or dis­tri­b­u­tions made by the com­pa­ny from the Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009 date of ac­qui­si­tion to the date of the restora­tion of the shares at an in­ter­est rate of 2.5 per cent per an­num; and that CL Fi­nan­cial re­pay the US$46.5 mil­lion con­sid­er­a­tion paid by Pro­man for the shares.

Some time af­ter the ac­qui­si­tion, Pro­man re­named the com­pa­ny Process En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd, which at the time of the sale held shares in two am­mo­nia plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate—Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny and Ni­tro­gen 2000—as well as a 48.75 per cent stake in South­ern Cor­po­ra­tion Com­pa­ny, a Texas com­pa­ny that mar­ket­ed methanol orig­i­nat­ing in T&T and 67.50 per cent stake in In­dus­tri­al Plant Ser­vices Ltd, a plant ser­vices com­pa­ny which pro­vid­ed ser­vices to am­mo­nia and methanol plants in T&T.

Af­ter the judg­ment, it was de­ter­mined that the amount of div­i­dends/dis­tri­b­u­tion owed to CL Fi­nan­cial was US$185,916,295.05 plus in­ter­est, as at Sep­tem­ber 2021.

That num­ber, plus the ac­cru­ing in­ter­est, would have grown up to the date of the agree­ment.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad rec­om­mend­ed that the US$46.5 mil­lion that Pro­man paid for the shares should be set off against the US$185.91 mil­lion in div­i­dends/dis­tri­b­u­tions.

Pro­man ap­pealed the High Court judge­ment, but the Court of Ap­peal did not up­hold the judge­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment source said the set­tle­ment would mean Pro­man hav­ing to with­draw the ap­peal from the Privy Coun­cil.

Pro­man is the largest op­er­a­tor on the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, with 14 petro­chem­i­cal plants.