Financial Services Litigation
Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago v former CL Financial executives
Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago v former CL Financial executives, High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, discontinued 26 January 2026.
Matter overview
CL Financial was one of the region's largest conglomerates; its collapse in 2009 drew a state intervention that grew to some TT$28 billion. In 2011 the Central Bank and CLICO sued the people and companies at the centre of the group: Lawrence Duprey, its former chairman; Andre Monteil, a former executive; Gita Sakal, its former corporate secretary; and two connected companies, Dalco Capital Management and Stone Street Capital. The claim sought to hold them responsible for losses said to flow from the collapse.
The claim ran for fifteen years. It survived Mr Duprey's death and went to trial before Mr Justice Robin Mohammed at the Waterfront Judicial Centre, only to end without a judgment; on 26 January 2026 the claimants filed a notice of discontinuance.
The litigation was the legal centrepiece of a story that reshaped the country's financial system; the collapse of CL Financial and the bailout that followed sit behind every stage of it.
Strategic approach
Justin Phelps SC acted for one of the former executives. A civil claim of this age and scale turns less on drama than on discipline: the pleaded case must be tested document by document, and decisions taken in a boardroom in the 2000s judged by what was known then, not by what the collapse later revealed.
The brief reached back to the start of the CL story. He had appeared at the 2011 Commission of Enquiry into the collapse, chaired by Sir Anthony Colman; the record built there remained the backdrop to the civil claim.
When the Central Bank moved to discontinue, attention turned to costs. The submissions advanced for his client were adopted by the other defendants.
Result
On 26 January 2026 the Central Bank and CLICO discontinued the claim. The principal litigation arising from the collapse ended there, with no finding of liability against any of the former executives.
Mr Justice Robin Mohammed kept costs with the court. He signalled that they would fall on the prescribed scale unless exceptional circumstances were shown, and he listed the parties to be heard on entitlement and amount. A discontinuance decides nothing, and that is the point: after a decade and a half, nothing was established against the people the claim had pursued.
