The Privy Council have decided that the law governing the liquidation of SIB in Antigua and Barbuda does not allow the Liquidators to re-adjust the losses amongst SIB depositors and that the losses must be left as they were when SIB went into liquidation in February 2009.  The Privy Council issued its decision on these issues in a 42 page judgment handed down on 16 December 2019. The Board of the Privy Council, which sits in London, is the highest court for dealing with the SIB liquidation matters and this decision is therefore the final say on these issues.

This decision means that the Liquidators cannot pursue claims against Net Winners (those investors who took out more than what they put in) or preference creditors (those investors that withdrew funds in the 6 months prior to SIB’s liquidation) and must now release all amounts that the Liquidators have previously held back from preference creditors.

This decision allows the Liquidators to release approximately US$20 million that had previously been held back from 4,093 preference creditors in the first two distributions.  The Liquidators will start preparations for the release of these funds shortly and will be in contact, by email, with all preference creditors impacted by this decision.

A link to the full decision of the Privy Council is below:

https://www.jcpc.uk/cases/docs/jcpc-2018-0075-judgment.pdf