$$ Troubles For 3 Caribbean Billionaires
Sir Allen Stanford is in jail. Lawrence Duprey lost has $100 billion C.L. empire and Jamaican financier Michael Lee Chin cannot pay bondholders on time.
Not an easy time for billionaires in the Caribbean.
Sir Allen Stanford, who was based in Antigua and got a knighthood there, has been indicted
of fraud a US $7 billion fraud and is currently is in jail in the United States.
If convicted of what has been described by the U.S. Justice Department as a “Ponzi” scheme, the flamboyant financier can face up to 250 years behind bars.
With his base in Antigua, Stanford,58, was the biggest private sector entrepreneur there, employing over 4,000 people in a variety of enterprises including a daily newspaper and sports. He shook up the cricket world when he funded a multi-million dollar 20-20 tournament in the Caribbean and had a similar arrangement with the England and Wales Cricket Board. Last year, he sponsored aUS $20 million winner-take-all 20-20 cricket match between the West Indies and England which the home side won.
A former executive told Tntinsider that he was surprised at all the revelations because he never suspected anything was amiss.
“He was a good employer who paid well and who never interfered in the business”, he said.
Trini Lawrence Duprey, 75, built the Caribbean’s biggest conglomerate, C.L. Finance, in roughly 16 years with over 60 companies in 32 countries. The companies included investments in insurance and finance, methanol, liquor, real estate, media, lumber, supermarkets.
Duprey over-extended himself and racked up debts of over $12 billion. In January he went cap in hand to the Government for help. The Government has now taken over what is left of C. L Financial and will try to, somehow, get this virtual bankrupt company back to financial health.
There will be an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday to deal with the fate of C.L. Financial which is now under the chairmanship of Government-appointed technocrat Dr Euric Bobb, a former Central Bank governor.
It is not known whether the freewheeling Duprey, who had no alternative but to resign as chairman, will attend the meeting.
Former associates said that Duprey tended to operate as a one-man team.
“C.L. Financial was really Lawrence Duprey. He had an instinctive business sense and made snap decisions,” one former associate said.
“He won some, he lost some. In Guyana he lost over $75 million in the lumber industry which he knew nothing about. Maybe, he took a lot of bad advice. He also had some bad investments in Barbados”.
Another former C.L. executive said that Duprey had no patience with lengthy board meetings.
“A board meeting would last about 20 minutes. He used to say anything longer than that was a political meeting.:
Duprey scoured the world looking for bargains, picking up mostly liquor companies and apparently using policyholder premiums which were supposed to be lodged in a statutory fund at the Central Bank to bankroll these investments.
Another billionaire experiencing a bit of problems is Jamaican financier Michael Lee Chin, owner of the Canada-based AIC Financial Group which has branches throughout the Caribbean.
According to reports, the holding company for his Caribbean Investments, AIC Barbados failed to meet March and April deadlines to pay some 150 bond-holders a total of US $155 million and payment has been postponed to November 27.
Lee Chin’s Caribbean investments apparently were affected by the international financial meltdown and a depreciation of the Jamaican dollar. Yesterday, the Jamaican dollar was valued at TT seven cents an the Jamaican Government has gone nto the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance.