The Trinidad and Tobago government says it will conduct a forensic audit to establish how much money was used to bailout the financially troubled Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) because of discrepancies in figures released by the previous administration.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert told the weekly end of Cabinet news conference that the figures released by the former People’s Partnership government do not match those released by the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.
He told reporters that the former government said that TT$24.5 billion had been used to bail out the company following the government’s intervention in 2009.
“But this (Central Bank) document speaks to $19.5 billion,” Imbert said, adding that he intends to clear up the confusion as to how much has been paid back and how much was still owed.
Imbert noting that he has been getting weekly updates on the CLICO issue, said a lot of the details of the agreements between the company and then government “have been virtually shrouded in secrecy over the last five years, or so”.
He said that a number of variations to the original agreement exist, and there were 16 extensions to the United Shareholder’s Company agreement.
