The ruling centred on the definition of an Investment Note Certificate (INC) and whether such deposits were guaranteed under the January 2009 Trinidad and Tobago government multi-billion dollar bail-out of the cash-strapped CL Financial Group.

The INC is a short-term deposit designed to give customers a safe haven for their investments above market rates.

“An agreement was never honoured, it’s just words you put on a piece of paper hoping to give parties comfort. It has no reasonable meaning, just a bunch of words strung together. You cannot dress up a deposit and change it in law. It cannot be done this way. No one said to us (by the way) it’s not a security but an investment,” said attorney Deborah Peak, who represented the NIB. (CMC)