CLICO Barbados Missing Assets

A report by Nationnews written by Natasha Beckles has stated that the Judicial Manager of CLICO International Life Insurance Ltd may be challenged in valuing, and recovering that company's assets as some supporting documentation is missing.

Deloitte Consulting Ltd represented by Oliver Jordan and Patrick Toppin said accounts provided by the company as at April 13, 2011, showed that assets totalled $802 million. However, according to Deloitte's Interim Report To The High Court of Barbados dated May 27, 2011, it had so far only been able to access and review documentation to support $446 million of the reported assets.

Information on CLICO's missing assets has fallen into the lap of taxpayers after it was also reported at Nationnews that government in 2010 had a rescue plan for CLICO International Life will see it add about $314 million to the country's national debt.

The question will now therefore focus as to whether the public should be paying taxes in order to support a privately operated company.

In a Wikileaks cable which is suspected to be from the United States Embassy (Mary Kramer, then US Ambassador to Barbados) during 2006, stated that Peter W. Wickham said amongst other things, that Leroy Parris (former Chairman of CLICO Holdings Limited) had supplied sums of money to a government for election campaigning.

The Wikileaks cable was released Tuesday, August 30th, 2011, and following suit, Mr. Peter W. Wickham was released from his relations at the government owned Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on Thursday September 1st, 2011. According to Nationnews, Mr. Wickham has confirmed his termination in a four-line letter he received on Thursday terminating the services of his organization.

What has been interesting is that Leroy Parris was also Chairman of CBC, until the news of the CLICO scheme broke, and his three year contract had expired.

The CLICO fiasco continues to claim casualties, as it was only on Sunday 21st August that Wickham had chairperson of Barbados Investors and Policy Holders Alliance (BIPA) June Fowler, and attorney representing the group Tariq Khan on the weekly live televised programme The People's Business. June Fowler had stated that the group wants to ensure that what happened to CLICO policy-holders does not occur in the future, whereas Tariq Khan believes the group has a range of legal options that BIPA wants to pursue.

June Fowler, on the missing assets, has suggested that it is about time someone be held accountable for the breakdown of the company, and policyholders be told the truth.