Investors in and creditors of Bermuda-based Sentinel Insurance Company have been called to meetings to decide whether to appoint liquidators and a committee of inspection into the failed venture.

On Friday December 21 a notice to creditors first meeting and a notice to contributories first meeting were posted for January 31, 2002 at the offices of KPMG in Crown House in Par-la-Ville in Hamilton.

But mystery still surrounds why the insurance company failed and why the Minister of Finance ordered the company to open its books last year.

The official petition for the winding up of the company by the Supreme Court was filed in March 14, 2001 by the Registrar of Companies, and a petition was due to be heard in April about putting the company into liquidation.

In February a Supreme Court Judge gave Minister of Finance Eugene Cox the go-ahead to investigate the company's affairs.

That meant the insurance company had to open its books for inspection by an official appointed by the minister.

Legal actions between the Minister and Sentinel were filed in December, 2000, but at the time neither company would comment on the writs that they filed against each other.

Sentinel had tried to stop the Ministry officials from looking at its books by filing counter-writs to stop the inspection.

But in a written judgment dated December 14, 2000, but filed in the court records in February, Chief Justice Austin Ward dealt with two cases, Sentinel Insurance versus the Ministry of Finance and Malcolm Butterfield and Registrar of Companies against Sentinel Insurance.

The judge said two applications were before him, one to set aside an order restraining the removal of books and papers of Sentinel Insurance and handing them over to an inspector appointed by the Minister of Finance on November 22, 2000.

The other was an application for leave to seek judicial review of the Minister's decision appointing the inspector. The judge said he was satisfied that the Minister had jurisdiction to appoint an inspector.

In December, 2000 Finance Minister Eugene Cox confirmed he had appointed an inspector to look into Sentinel but he would not say what had prompted the inspection into the business.

At the meeting liquidators are expected to be appointed and a committee formed to investigate the collapse of the company.