Reached for comment yesterday, Panday said: ’A categorical no.’ He said: ’Usually we don’t say who gives us donations, obviously they would be victimised and so on, but in this case to refuse to answer would create more doubts so the answer is a categorical no. We have received no money from CL. None whatever.’

Political leader of the Congress of the People (COP) Winston Dookeran said his party received zero contributions from CL Financial in 2007. Monteil didn’t respond to telephone messages left on his voicemail. Reginald Dumas, a retired career diplomat and former head of the Public Service, said there is a clear conflict of interest with the ruling party taking huge sums of money from CL Financial, knowing as the rest of the country did that they were not following the rules. He said the CL situation once more raises the question about the absence of campaign financing laws and the backroom deals that are made between parties that win the election and the big corporations that finance their election campaign.

Dumas said the government had a duty to safeguard policyholders and depositors’ funds instead of allowing rogue companies to dance around deficient legislation. ’They were concerned about winning an election,’ he said, noting that the Manning administration effectively turned a blind eye to what was going on. He said the taxpayer bailout of the CL Group raises more questions about the beneficiary role of the incumbent Manning administration.