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Lawrence Duprey's CL Financial empire might have survived one or two rough waves, but not the perfect storm conditions into which the captain rode his ship which eventually ran ashore to be grounded inside the Central Bank two Fridays ago.

At any other time, Duprey might have had a shot at riding out the stormy conditions of plunging methanol prices and the collapse of international equity markets. But when all this and more came in the midst of major dislocation inside the very heart of the CL Financial empire, his chances of survival became all but impossible.

In the space of less than a year, CL Financial lost some of its biggest heavyweights, men who had kept the brand flying high with unrivalled hands-on management skills of the business beast that was CL Financial. Prime among them was Andre Monteil, Duprey's top lieutenant and man of business. Where Duprey was the big picture man, Monteil was the man who kept a hawk's eye on detail and stayed close enough to know the empire inside out, bringing to the job of Financial Director an unparalleled combination of financial wizardry, company insight and political connections.

Also gone over the past few months were Robert Mayers who had built CMMB from the ground up and Anthony Fifi who was at the helm in making CL Financial's Home Construction Company into the pioneering mega entity that single-handedly transformed East Trinidad. The sudden and dramatic departure of these three and other top members of Duprey's team took the group into a transition so profound that CL Financial broke into two camps with an old guard and new guard, with no love lost between them, creating fertile conditions for internal combustion.

Since the group's collapse a week ago, the corporate air has been thick with poison arrows as each side condemns the other for creating the disaster while the man presiding atop it all, billionaire entrepreneur Lawrence Duprey admitting that yes, he misjudged it. History may ultimately show that Lawrence Duprey miscalculated the seriousness of the coming economic storm, perhaps because he remained too far away from it all.

In the end, his plan to batten the hatches and consolidate his group's finances was off the radar by about two years.

At this stage of CL Financial's unraveling, no one with information wants to go on the record with the media, although most are willing to talk. Various sources on both sides of Duprey's fence talk about the battle deep inside CL Financial's heart between its old management guard and the new turks in charge of the business fortune.

Duprey himself found out too late. From all accounts, the globetrotting entrepreneur, who built his uncle's insurance company into a behemoth like no other, continued to do business as usual on the old assumption that his core management team knew what they were doing.

Old guard sources told the Sunday Express that a significant portion of the group's troubles could be attributed to poor judgment, corporate infighting, and personal agendas among some in CL Financial's new management elite. To the old guard, the new team simply didn't know enough about what they were doing and Duprey paid the ultimate price for assuming that they did.

To the new guard, however, some in the old guard had left behind too many questions, too many holes, continued to interfere and withheld the required levels of co-operation from the successor leaders.

At his most critical hour when it became clear that CL was facing the fight of its life, Duprey called his longtime top gun and former group financial director, Andre Monteil to the rescue. The billionaire industrialist, some say, may have misjudged the critical value of his former top lieutenant and the huge vacuum left by his departure.

His decision to call his old lieutenant to help him ride out the storm was not widely applauded by the new CL Financial elite, according to sources close to the situation. But that was the least of Duprey's worries.

The global recession had cut deep into group's balance sheet, draining cash faster than they could make it and ruining customer confidence. In a desperate gambit for a billion dollars in much needed liquidity to prevent a run on financial services companies within the CL Financial Group, Duprey approached the Central Bank as a lender of last resort.

Sources close to CL Financial say up to the time he went to the Central Bank, Duprey was working on the assumption that CL Financial had worked out a line of credit with the authorities and that when he walked into the Eric Williams Financial Plaza two Fridays ago, he went fully expecting to walk out and continue business as usual.

He had been pressing for some ease-up on the rules requiring the CL Financial Group to reduce the value of Republic Bank shares held in the Statutory Fund by December 31, 2008. He brought Monteil into discussions on a financial rescue on January 24, according to sources.

Monteil, who was CL Financial's Group Financial Director up until October last year and a former People's National Movement treasurer, was seen as Duprey's miracle man. Duprey felt if anybody could rescue the family-owned conglomerate, it was the retired Monteil. But the relationship between the two has been fraught with the complexities of politics and friendship. A source close to both says what he saw between them was the classic case of a love-hate relationship. Perhaps it is one of the oldest coming-of-age stories about father and son.

It is that ambivalence in the relationship between the visionary Duprey and the builder Monteil, who for years transformed the dreams into truckloads of money, that is fuelling speculation about Monteil's role in the defeat of CL Financial and Duprey's problems.

Sources close to the negotiations with the Central Bank are sharply critical of the conspiracy suggestions, saying there was little room for manoeuvre and that the rescue package put together by the Central Bank was really the only way out for Duprey's CL Financial Group.

The Sunday Express was told there were some serious liquidity problems in the group, much of it tied to Duprey's cowboy style of doing business.

"He couldn't resist a deal," said one source, noting that Duprey would often close deals and look for the money afterwards.

That business model worked well for CL Financial during the good times but it would exact a harsh price in the current lean times: A dismantled CL Financial and the possible loss of its master entrepreneur, Lawrence Duprey, to a friendlier place to do business.

Many feel it is too high a price to pay and that other options could have been explored. A source close to Duprey put a biblical interpretation on the perceived lack of public appreciation for Duprey's business genius: "A prophet is without honour in his own country."