One year and three months into the Commission of Enquiry into collapsed insurance giant CLICO, the Minister of Finance has fired the team of lawyers who were representing the ministry, sources confirmed yesterday.
According to a report in the Sunday Express the team which was headed by Senior Counsel Fyard Hosein and Michael Quamina, were given their marching orders last week. They had been hired during Winston Dookeran’s tenure at the Finance Ministry.
They have been replaced by Seenath Jairam SC leading Jagdeo Singh and Joseph Toney. Jairam is president of the Law Association.
Singh who has been the beneficiary of a number of State briefs, is also the junior attorney for the Commission in the Commission of Enquiry into the 1990 coup attempt.
Toney is chairman of the Congress of the People, a member of the People’s Partnership government. Hosein yesterday confirmed that he is no longer counsel to the Ministry of Finance.
“My services have been terminated. No reason was given. And it has been terminated summarily, full stop.”
Hosein has had a long history with the Ministry on the CLICO matter. Hosein was retained by the Ministry of Finance in February 2009 following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between CLICO and the government.
He had been retained to advise the ministry where it should go from there.
In March 2009, he was retained to file an injunction to prevent former CLICO chairman Lawrence Duprey from selling the shares in the CL Financial group’s methanol company.
The enquiry, which began in July 2011, has been going on for over a year and is due to be completed in May next year. The Commission resumes on October 22 when the change of attorneys will become evident. The Commission is supposed to spend three days on the Hindu Credit Union, before returning to ClICO on October 25 or 26.
Express
