BCCI (Hansard, 24 February 1992)

§ Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, the need for urgent action by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry following the settlement proposals for BCCI. The matter is specific because, as the House knows, the liquidators of BCCI and the representatives of the Sheik of Abu Dhabi last Friday published, at long last, their settlement proposals. The proposals have as their cornerstone a very substantial payment of between $1.7 billion and $2.2 billion by the Sheik of Abu Dhabi. I pay tribute to the generosity and assistance of the sheik in seeking to support the innocent depositors of BCCI. The Government of Abu Dhabi have retained their dignity. Even the advertisement in The Daily Telegraph today is in measured tones. I welcome the proposals, but they are complicated. There is much detail and depositors may have to waive some of their rights.

The matter is important because on 14 January 1992 the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in a 13-minute exchange of faxes, appointed four liquidators on the undertaking that they would hold a creditors' meeting within a certain time. Twenty weeks after the closure of the bank, the creditors have still not been consulted. As was demonstrated last Friday, the liquidators—the £1 million a week men—appear to be out of control. They were more interested in briefing the press than in telling the creditors' association and the staff committee about the proposed deal.

The matter is urgent, because I understand that the liquidators are proposing to go to court imminently to seek to be relieved of their undertaking to hold a creditors' 684 meeting on the ground that such a meeting would be too difficult to arrange. The vast majority of creditors have not been consulted about the proposal. It is perfectly possible, in my view, should they not want to call a meeting, that, via a satellite link-up around the globe in five or six world centres, depositors and creditors could talk to and listen to the liquidators. I understand that this would cost less than a mass meeting in London, which is estimated to cost £750,000.

The creditors must be allowed to discuss the settlement and ask questions of the liquidators. They need to know when the first payments can be made. Local authorities, and others, need the money now. We need to know why proof of debt forms have still not been sent out by the liquidators and, thus, why no money has been paid under the statutory scheme.

Under the liquidators' proposals they will merely be sent a form for depositors to state whether they approve of the deal. They will not know exactly who they are not going to be allowed to sue. That is not good enough. During the negotiations there was a need for secrecy but no longer. We need a full debate in the House to allow the Secretary of State to set out what proposals he has to deal with this unsatisfactory state of affairs.