When Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira made a statement in Parliament on Developments in Clico Investment Bank and CLICO before piloting the two bills relating to Government's bailout of CL Financial on February 2, she made no disclosure about her investments of any kind—whether shares or deposits—in CL Financial or any of its subsidiaries.

By comparison, four members of Parliament made voluntary public disclosures of their interests with CL Financial during the debate on the bailout bills (the Central Bank Amendment and the Insurance Amendment bills) in the House of Representatives and the Senate last month.

Perhaps influenced by what transpired in the House of Representatives when revelations were made that Nunez-Tesheira withdrew money from CIB two weeks before receiving the official brief on CL Financial troubles, several MPs, among them her ministerial colleague, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Mariano Browne, declared their interest.

Browne, in piloting the bills in the Senate, made a "confession" of his own involvement in CL Financial.

Browne said: "My employment spans all or some the institutions covered in the Memorandum of Understanding." He added that he was employed with Republic Bank, Clico Investment Bank and the Caribbean Commercial Bank, all members of the CL Financial Group, at one point or another.

"At today's date, I have no deposits in CIB or Clico, but I do have two pension annuity contracts as a result of my employment with Clico," Browne said. "There are no loans or deposits, but I do have loans and deposits with Republic Bank and I am a shareholder of Republic Bank. Having said that, I am not a significant shareholder, and I have no shares in CL Financial," Browne stated.

Independent Senator Basharat Ali, in his "very short intervention", also gave a breakdown of his and his wife's interest in CL Financial. "I believe it will be prudent... to make a declaration that my family and I have interests in this matter. Firstly, in the case of Republic Bank, they have been our bankers for over 45 years. They are also the corporate bankers of Joyce E Ali and Co, our joint company; and they are our mortgagors—we are near the end of the mortgage on our building on Frederick Street. We are also shareholders in Republic Bank Ltd and we hold investments via other instruments," Ali said, adding, "That is the brief outline of my wife's interest and mine in Republic Bank."

But Ali said there were other interests he wished to disclose. "And I am doing it in the expectation that nobody will say that Senator Ali was voting for his wife's interest in CL Financial. I stand here in pursuance of the oath I have taken and for no other reason," he said.

He said his wife was one of the few shareholders of CL Financial by inheritance. "It is not a substantial shareholding, but it quite a few shares. "Clico pays me a small pension... I declare that also. My wife has insurance and other investments with Clico... Our company has health plans with Clico... We have in those three companies: Republic Bank, CL Financial Ltd and Clico Holdings, which I say is prudent for me to declare today, so that everybody will know and nobody will think that whatever I say here today is not in conscience with respect to the oath I have taken in this country," Ali stated.

Opposition Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, speaking in the House during the debate, began his contribution by stating: "Mr Speaker, in joining this debate, I have a duty to make certain disclosures under the 'Code of Ethics for Parliamentarians including Ministers'. "When the interest of Members or his immediate family is involved, the parliamentarian should disclose those interests to the extent that they are known to him".

As part of the preface, Maharaj also said a parliamentarian "should scrupulously avoid investments or other transactions about which he has or might reasonably be thought to have early or confidential information which might convey on him an unfair or improper advantage over other persons". He also said MPs should not use official information to gain a pecuniary advantage.

Maharaj said he wanted to put on the record that he is a customer of Republic Bank, does not own any policy with Clico, is not a customer with CIB and that his wife, Lynette Maharaj is also a customer of Republic Bank.

Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar stated in her contribution: "I have no interest at Clico, CIB and so on. But I do have my little bit of dollars in Republic Bank, as do many thousands of other persons in this country".

Persad-Bissessar was the MP who raised the question of whether Nunez-Tesheira withdrew money from any company in the CL Financial group using "privileged information".

In her windup Nunez Tesheira responded that she made withdrawals from CMMB and "other accounts" which she used to purchase a car and a home. "The contract to purchase the property was September 17 and the date of completion was December 17, 2008 " she said, adding that she made withdrawals on September 17, December 3 and December 17, 2008 "to pay for that property". "Out of the same account," she said, "I purchased a car and I made that withdrawal on August 20".

She then said: "On December 31, 2008, I withdrew an account which had matured on December 31, 2008". Since then, Express investigations have discovered that Nunez-Tesheira had (not one) but two accounts with CIB, which matured (not on December 31) but was due to mature in April and August 2009 respectively. And she applied on December 30 to break these two deposits.

In an interview with the Express on February 4, Nunez-Tesheira also confirmed that her sister made an application on December 30 to break the $2.1 million deposit held in her late mother's name, Una Nunez.

In that interview Nunez-Tesheira said: "Everybody knew CIB was in trouble." But she stressed that she only received the formal brief on the issue of CL Financial troubles on January 14.

In an interview on the same day with this newspaper, she stated: "The information about CIB and the concerns about CIB, were out there in the public domain for a long time, and my sister being a banker, would have been one of the persons who would have heard the concerns about CIB."

Asked if in hindsight she should have declared her investments in CIB and CMMB before making any statements in the Parliament on the issue, Nunez-Tesheira said she had no need to do so. "In answering that question, it would imply that there was something that somehow was untoward," she said, adding that there was not(hing untoward).