WILLEMSTAD – The so-called exhibition claim, whereby owner Hushang Ansary and the ex-directors of the insurance company Ennia want to inspect all documents, is “a sham” according to Ennia and the Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS). They are only concerned with further delaying the procedure, which was initiated more than a year ago.
In turn, Ansary and his associates believe that the liability proceedings against them are “far-reaching accusations.” Partly for this reason, they want full access to all evidence against them that insurance company Ennia and regulator CBCS have. The judge will decide this on Monday.
There is no question of a so-called “fishing expedition”, according to Ansary’s lawyers. It is true that Ansary and the rest of the defendants request access to many documents – in terms of quantity – and it is also true that these are documents covering a longer period, lawyers Mirto Murray and Karan Doekhi admit.
The point is, however, that in the alleged liabilities it covers the entire period, from the acquisition of Ennia by Ansary from Delta Lloyd in 2005/2006 to the moment when the court pronounces the emergency regulation in July 2018 at the request of the CBCS.
That is, the five Ennia companies – controlled by CBCS since the emergency settlement – had previously offered to allow defendant owner Ansary to inspect some of the claimed records. However, the lawyers of Ennia and the CBCS argue that granting the exhibition claim could lead to “many months delay”. This while the procedure has been running since the end of 2019 and has not even started yet.
The number of documents that Ansary is claiming copies of, coupled with the ‘impenetrable, chaotic records’ left by the ex-directors with Ennia will make it impossible for the insurer to comply with a conviction within a reasonable timeframe, resulting in of this ‘big delay’. “The policyholders will have to pay the price for that,” is the fear.
In addition, the shareholder and former directors Abdallah Andraous, Ralph Palm, Nina Ansary (daughter of the 95-year-old owner) and owner company Parman International BV “already” have the documents of which they now want a copy. According to the lawyers Karina Keizer, Sabine Altena and Michiel van den Brink on behalf of Ennia and the CBCS.
Hushang and Nina Ansary as well as Andraous used private e-mail accounts for their e-mail correspondence. This means that they – and Ennia and the CBCS in particular – do not have access to their correspondence with the insurance company. Many other documents from the administration have also been sent to them by e-mail in recent years.
The lawyers then give a whole series of examples on behalf of Ennia and the CBCS, to illustrate their assertion that Ansary already received and has received a lot of documents from both the management at the time and the so-called ‘silent curators’ later.
These examples, of which there are many, show that the exhibition claim is “a sham”. They have no interest in this at all, because they already have documents that may be relevant to their defense. Their importance is to further delay the procedure.
