Karen Conflict of Interest.

Late mother's $2m deposit broken
By Camini Marajh
Story Created: Feb 4, 2009 ECT


Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira late yesterday confirmed reports that her sister broke a $2.1 million deposit held in her dead mother's name, Una Nunez, at the financially distressed CLICO Investment Bank (CIB) on January 20.

Minister Nunez-Tesheira, however, made clear that the application for the early termination of the deposit was made on December 30, well before she received a formal brief on CL Financial troubles by Governor of the Central Bank Ewart Williams.

Describing the leak of information about her late mother's CIB account as "a breach of her parents privacy", the Finance Minister said her sister made a request to close the account on December 30, well before CL Financial Group executive chairman Lawrence Duprey approached the Central Bank for financial assistance to stave off a run on financial services companies in the privately-owned conglomerate.

Saying that "everybody knew CIB was in trouble", the Finance Minister said she was formally briefed on the issue of CL troubles on January 14 by Williams.

She said her sister should not be brought into the affair and was appalled that her parents' private financial affairs had reached the media. "I am not the one who is going to give out that type of information," she said.

She said it was a stretch for anyone to suggest that she should know what the regulator didn't know in December.

On Monday, Opposition MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar accused the Finance Minister of using insider information related to CL's financial troubles to her personal advantage.
Nunez-Tesheira has denied the allegations that she pulled private deposits held in CIB after she learnt about CL's precarious financial situation.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Late_mother_s__2m_deposit_broken-115462249.html

Documents from CLICO Investment Bank (CIB) show that Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira closed two US dollar accounts with the bank on December 31, 2008, before they were scheduled to mature later this year.

CIB is one of four CL Financial businesses that benefited from a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout approved by the Cabinet last month.Nunez-Tesheira told Parliament on February 2 that she took the money out of a CIB account that had matured. However the docments show that Nunez-Tesheira paid a 3.5 per cent penalty for closing two accounts at CIB worth a total of US$48,549.91.

They were due to mature on April 30, 2009 and August 13, 2009 respectively. She closed one account at US$37,549.45 and the other at US$11,076.34, including interest. Persad-Bissessar suggested that the minister had access to privileged information about CIB, which led to her making withdrawals from her accounts with the bank and Caribbean Money Market Brokers (CMMB), another CL subsidiary, late last year.

http://jyoticommunication.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-parliament-to-debate-no-confidence-in.html

Here is what the official Hansard records the minister as saying regarding a CIB account:

"On December 31, I withdrew an account which had matured on December 31, 2008. You go and check it because when you were making your accusations, I wanted to ensure that I was accurate on the information, and I called to get all the information that I had on every withdrawal I made in relation to those two institutions."

Nunez Teshiera claimed that she did not realise that she was breaking the despoits although she signed for the transactions. She said she was not informed by anyone at CIB that she was, in fact, breaking the accounts.

"The request was first made verbally. In that initial discussion, no one said to me that what I was doing I was breaking an account," Nunez-Tesheira told the media.