Good day,

I have been a visitor to your island for some time now.  Recently, I have had some friends come to visit me and they are now interested in moving here.  They have asked me to find out about the crime rate and trends on the island to help them decide where they should like to live.

I have searched all over the internet and have even asked a couple of different police officers for crime statistics on the island.

To date, I have been unsuccessful.  After reading your article regarding the Police Commissioners press conference earlier this week, I wondered if perhaps you had access to this information??

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Sincerely,

NAME WITHHELD BY BFP EDITOR

Last year I was privileged to see the photography collection of a man who worked for a time at the aircraft disposal facility at Kingman, Arizona. The photos were works of art, but so much more too. On his days off, the photographer took his camera into the cockpits of the doomed airliners and documented every switch, every scratch and what remained after ten thousand flights.

A Douglas DC6 photo showed a flight plan dropped between the seats by one “C. Moss” in 1959 that remained there until the photographer found it thirty years later. The same aircraft had a plexiglas dome installed so the navigator could take star shots in the high arctic where compasses cannot be trusted. As I looked at that photo I thought about the man who could hold a sextant steady enough in turbulence at twenty thousand feet to do any good. I admire that pilot because he was a better navigator than I’ll ever be.

Most of my friends at home don’t understand how a person can get sentimental over a junkyard for airliners that are past their useful life, but my flying friends understand immediately. The airplanes are a connection with the people, now passed on, who made the aluminum, steel and oil come alive.

I feel the presence of those gone before me as I touch a fifty-year old mixture control worn smooth by a thousand hands.

I get the same feeling when I touch the wall of the restored Morgan Lewis windmill, but with more sadness then anything when I touch some of the other crumbling bits of history around the island. When I walk the ground at Newton, I can feel the souls of the thousands who toiled and died there – but so much of what they built was deliberately left to rot.

In our haste to assert ourselves as a people and to break the chains of our colonial slave masters, we somehow decided that the structures of the plantation class were oppressive – so we let them rot.

Deliberately, I believe.

We thought that destroying the structures of the planters would somehow free us, and that is what we did.

Are we better for that?

I say that letting the plantation homes rot didn’t free us from our past. It set us adrift without the tangible bits of history that connect us to where we came from and who we are.

Robert

Special thanks to Keith Clarke of Barbados in Focus for the shot of the old mill base. A hundred years from now Keith’s photographs of contemporary Barbados will be treasured as future generations look at the past to develop a sense of who they are.

Editor’s Note: With 500 employees and some 25 million registered active users, Trip Advisor is probably one of the most influential travel websites in the world. (For some idea of the freeflow of ideas and information that happens there, read the Trip Advisor thread Barbados or Jamaica?)

One traveler recently posted an article about our ZRs, which we lifted and repeat below.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the collective opinion on this island is that it is about time for our government to stop talking and to start acting to rein in these ZR outlaws. The number one threat to our tourism industry is not beach erosion or over building or rudeness towards tourists (although those factors are all important).

The number one threat to our tourism industry is anything that conveys a message that Barbados is an unsafe tourism destination. Anything that even smells like it might make tourists think about their personal safety should be taken care of with all dispatch.

When will our government start putting these outlaws out of business?

Ya can’t hide this stuff anymore folks. It’s called THE INTERNET…

First of all, look at the accident statistics…

“Barbados was ranked in the Top 10 nations with accident victims according to the size of their population, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit, which compiles and publishes data on a range of economic and social issues every year.

No other Caribbean country was listed among the top 50 states when it came to road accident victims.”

Posted on Trip Advisor by “Madwand” of Baton Rouge, Louisiana USA

ZR Hustling Pimps of Barbados

I posted some of this in another message, but wanted to elaborate for the sake of anyone looking to ride on the ZR buses. This was never mentioned in any of the reading I did before I went.

Some of the ZR buses are very dangerous and operating illegally. These will be the ones you will see that will stop for you even though there are already so many people in the vehicle that they are squeezing out the windows. These buses will have a ZR pimp operating the side door and doing the hustling. He will be the one snatching people in and out of the vehicle to make room for more people. These will be the ones that are stuffed over capacity and are not safe to ride on.

The first ZRs I rode in was so bad we got stopped at an intersection by a cop and several people were made to get off and the driver was written a warning. Then he blasted off again doing the same thing, zooming through subdivisions trying to beat traffic. To top it off, when we got to B’town, I was expecting the bus station, not a parking lot full of ZRs, so I didn’t get off, and nobody said anything. and halfway back to Oistens the ZR pimp told me I had to pay again. So I got off and handed him another $1.50 to get off. Then paid another $1.50 to go back to B’town again. At least the second bus wasn’t husting, so it was nice and safe.

If you are waiting for a ZR bus and you see one like this stop and solicit you, do not get on or you will regret it. You will see a dozen of them in a minute’s time, so don’t feel like you have to get on the first one that stops for you, even if the ZR pimp persists on taking you. Keep waiting til one stops for you that is not stuffed full.

Unless we change the course we’re on, Chinese will build the condos. Bajan maids will clean them. Your sons will wash the yachts.

… and your public beaches and open spaces near the city will be long gone.

My friends: the choices we make now may not impact us personally, but will our children and grandchildren be cursing our names forty years hence?

After 14 or 15 years of the BLP selling off pieces of the island, blowing hundreds of millions of dollars at a time on failed mega-projects like Cricket World Cup and GEMS Hotels – and siphoning off 3% of every tax dollar you ever paid to places like Switzerland and Turks & Caicos – we find our country with less than nothing left in the bank and deteriorated, broken infrastructure systems that are in many cases way beyond repair.

Not to mention that the world’s economy dropped off a cliff just about the time that the then-new Thompson DLP Government was sworn into power.

When the BLP were in power The Nation newspaper was the government rag. Now the Nation goes wanting for government advertising dollars and The Barbados Advocate is the rag of choice for the DLP government.

Have a look at the headlines in the Barbados Advocate. The best news they can announce on most days is that we managed to beg another loan or grant from some UN or Caribbean development fund. Or the Chinese gave us some trinkets. Or we received another ongoing EU sugar payment that we extorted because we are experts at hitting the white-guilt-over-slavery button.

Just telling it like it is. Disagree if you want, it’s a free blog for most words.

Some advice to The Advocate: suck up those government advertising dollars while you can boys and girls, because the steady trade winds of political power that Owen Arthur and Mia Mottley enjoyed for 14 years have given way to a chaotic storm.

Nothing is for sure anymore. Not the tourist dollars, not the cruise ships, not the offshore banking dollars and for certain no matter how things look now the Thompson government’s re-election will be no sure thing next time around.

Especially because the economy isn’t going to get better for a while and the electorate tends to punish sitting governments for the world’s economic performance. It doesn’t have to make sense, but even Hartley Henry will tell you that is for true.

Prime Minister Thompson was in the papers the other day telling us that times are rough and we have to adjust our living standards and expectations and put our spending priorities straight. Pay them water bills! says Thompy.

Ya have to know that ‘tings must be pretty bad for him to say that.

We Must Not Give In

Here is the point of this little rum-fueled rant (Ok… I admit it!  Cliverton)

Anyway, here is the point…

No matter how bad things are now and for the next few years, we must not, we cannot – sell off / close off our beaches and our open spaces for a few dollars – or for any dollars. When we do that we are selling off our future in so many ways: our ability to attract tourists, our children’s quality of life and their future.

What got me thinking about this was an excellent point made by our friends at Mullins Bay Blog. Go over there, read This Is Monaco: Is This What We Want For Barbados? and follow some of the links.

Then ask yourself, it that what you want for your children?

(This article can be found at CNN iReport. BFP reproduces it here because, hey, ya never know when the big boys at CNN might change their minds about publishing it.)

Back in 1967 I came to the USA with my older sisters from the island of Barbados.  I later returned to attend school in Barbados before leaving again to return to the US.  Upon my return I opted not to attend college and joined the U.S Army where I received a Congressional nomination to the United States Academy West Point.  I did not attend West Point but went on to join the 82nd Airborne Division.

I was honorably discharged and started out in the telecommunications and technology industry and made a name for myself.  While working  with Lucent Technologies, Inc. I got a good feel for where the industry was going and where it would be today and have been spot on.  When the Oklahoma bombing happened I sent the FBI a long recommendation to use finger print scanning and other biometric tools some of which we now see being slowly implemented.

I returned to Barbados while working for GRIC and that was when i got the entrepreneurial bug and started my own telecommunication company.  I signed on with the U.S Advocacy Program and made a personal commitment not to do anything that would go against my own personal integrity and morals.

I was approached by those that wanted me to bribe them to get the telecommunication licenses but a vehemently refused to do so and managed to successfully receive a concession for the licenses i needed.  Despite this at every turn my attempts to launch the company and get funding were faced with those seeking to either steal the company or undermine my efforts.

Those that would want me to accept their terms of fraudulent activities which were declined then insured that they smear my name for being rebuffed by me.

Last year we managed to get a loan from the Bank of Nova Scotia (Barbados).  In January of this year just as we ere about to launch the company starting off with call termination the Bank of Nova Scotia (Barbados) froze our company’s (AccessOne Barbados) bank account claiming that according to the SWIFT message we were only suppose to use the funds to pay the invoices of WireIE, the guarantor for our loan.  The Bank of Nova Scotia has completely ignored the fact that the Term Sheet clearly stated the funds were supposed to be used to assist with the building of our WiMAX network, and there is nothing within the agreement signed by the bank that stated the funds were supposed to be used to pay any invoices form WireIE.

The General manager of the bank asked us not to tell WireIE because they ( Bank of Nova Scotia) screwed up and would be sued.  We were then told to find a replacement investor which we did.  The new investor agreed to invest $ 10,000,000.00 USD in the company which would have replaced the existing loan.  The new investor’s attorneys gave the bank two “Undertakings”.  The undertaking provided to the bank were that should AccessOne not draw down on the approved loan within 60-days the $ 500,000.00 USD that was to be sent by the bank would be returned.  The second undertaking was that the first tranche would be sent directly to Bank of Nova Scotia insuring they would be able to take out the proceeds to pay back the loan of $ 2,000,000.00 USD of the original
$ 2,400,000.00 USD.

I travelled to London to complete the transaction and while there the new investor and I got a call form the General Manager of the bank, Mr. Mac Anderson, that he would not be sending the funds to complete the transaction which he previously agreed to do.

One of the invoices from the guarantor, WireIE (Canadian company) was for $ 900,000.00 USD and provided no detail explanation for the purpose of the invoice.  To approve the payment of such an invoice would have been tantamount to money laundering.  The attorney who handled the transaction provided an affidavit confirming that at no time was there ever any discussion to use the funds from the loan from the Bank of Nova Scotia to pay any invoices from WireIE.

We were able to uncover that the law firm used by the Bank of Nova Scotia, Cassels Brock, is also the law firm that was used by WireIE.  In addition to this the General Manger of the Bank of Nova Scotia used to work for the Chairman of the investor in WireIE, and The General Manager of the Bank of Nova Scotia breached the confidentiality of AccessOne Barbados and the Bank of Nova Scotia by sharing the information pertaining to AccessOne Barbados with persons outside the bank as well as with WireIE.

The Bank of Nova Scotia’s actions has caused AccessOne Barbados, Inc. to lose approximately $ 21.4 Mil USD as of the end of September.  I would like to have this story told because I don’t want those coming from poor families like have run into this and be dissuaded from pursuing their dreams and hopes for a better life.

I would like to see the U.S Authorities that I have made aware of the actions of the bank take action against the bank and its senior executives.  I would also like to see the U.S Department of Justice take action against the bank as well.  At this stage the bank has denied it did anything wrong and has denied that they agreed to send funds to London despite the hard and irrefutable proof provided from an email sent to the old investors in London.

I want to world to know that the Bank of Nova Scotia and its Executives Mr. Mac Anderson, General Manager, Mr. Kevin Teslyk, Eastern Caribbean President, and Mr. Roy Purcell are dishonest banking executives and should be investigated for what they have done in this matter.  It is clear that the Toronto offices of the bank are involved as well.

Keith J. Walker
Founder/Chairman
AccessOne Barbados, Inc.

P.S I am happy to provide any documentation and letters.  I can be reached at 909-342-0288

Government and its agencies must hold banks responsible for their illegal actions.

August 2008: Michael Lashley announces that government might maybe think about doing something. Maybe. If.

Ho hum. Minister of Housing Michael Lashley has just announced (hold your breath!) yet another audit for wrongdoing by the previous BLP government. Oh wait… this is the same announcement Lashley made in August of 2008!

How many “Special Audit” announcements is that in the last two years? Ten? Twenty?

We’ve lost count.

Here’s what we wrote in 2008 after 9 months of the Thompson DLP government…

Previous Arthur/Mottley BLP Government Shouldn’t Worry: The Fix Is In!

I think I’ve lost track of the number of “Special”, “Forensic” and “Special Forensic” audits talked about by the David Thompson DLP Government. Thompson and his gang are in their ninth month of governing Barbados and one thing is for sure…

The fix is in. There will be lots of shouting and posturing, but no real action will be taken to hold members of the previous administration to account for their corruption. And there will be no real action taken by the Thompson Government to recover any of the millions of our tax dollars that were given away in overpriced sweetheart government contracts by the Arthur/Mottley administration.

… from BFP’s August 2008 article: Barbados Government Announcement Of (Yes, Another) SPECIAL AUDIT for NHC!!! Wow!!! (Yawn…)

Same old, Same old story in the Nation…

CABINET COULD SOON BE having a close look at the controversial sale of state land in Kent, Christ Church, to determine whether laws were broken.
Minister of Housing and Lands Michael Lashley made the disclosure on Friday while delivering the weekly lecture at the Democratic Labour Party’s (DLP) headquarters in Belleville, St Michael.

Lashley said in an interview later: “The matter will be discussed internally at the NHC [National Housing Corporation] and then it will be forwarded to Cabinet.”

He said he was “very disturbed” by the development.

Auditor General Leigh Trotman first raised some concerns about the land sales in a scathing Special Audit of the NHC covering the five-year period April 1, 2003, to March 31, 2008.

Leigh said that under the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration, more 
than 80 acres of Government-owned land earmarked by the NHC for housing were eventually sold to private developers, contrary to decisions 
of Parliament.

Minister of Economic Affairs David Estwick, who attended the lecture, said the NHC had acted ultra vires of the mandate given by Parliament.
He told the gathering that Government needed to treat the issue with the gravity it merited.

Government Senator Jepter Ince said: “I want to know, as a citizen of Barbados, what happened to the $16 milion as stated in the Auditor General’s report from the sale of land at Kent that was supposed to go to Country Park Towers.

“All of Country Park Towers never got out the foundation until this present Government came to office. I want a full investigation.”

… Continue reading this article at The Nation: Kent Probe

This is NOT the photo of Serena that Marcus links to in the article.

The girls (meaning Shona and friends) have tickets to see tennis giants Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki square off at Tennis pon de Rock on November 28, 2009. Yours truly has been informed that, night shift or not, I WILL be changing the diapers so the ladies can have a day off. I am not allowed to call Auntie Moses even though she won’t be going to the match.

Funny thing is, I told Shona that I’d love to go with her to the match but she won’t hear of it. Says she needs some time off from me and little ones. I don’t think that’s it though. I can’t figure out the reason she doesn’t want me to go to the match. Could it have been that nude magazine cover that Serena recently did for ESPN? I mean, come on honey, it’s only a sports event. Tennis, doan ya know?

Maybe I’ll figure it out later, but meanwhile it looks like I’m in the doghouse for some reason.

Statistics bamboozle Commissioner Dottin… or maybe it’s the other way around

A smiling Commissioner of Police announced that the latest statistics showing a reduction in crime were “very gratifying”. But as unquestioning reporters lapped up Dottin’s every word, a different story was playing itself out just north of Grape Hall where yet another citizen decided that it just wasn’t worth his time to report a theft to the police.

One of our friends got a little lazy last week and left two lightly used truck tires on rims at the side of his home for only a few days instead of taking them to someone who had a use for them. He came home last Wednesday night to find the tires gone and he felt like slapping himself upside the head for his foolishness. You know how it is ’bout hey: you can’t leave so much as a garden hose outside overnight or it will be gone.

Why didn’t my friend report the crime to the police?

“Why bother, nothin happen” was his answer. That reasoning is more prevalent in Barbados than ever as our understrength and underpaid police force struggles with a triple onslaught of inadequate training,  ancient equipment and increased demands for service and professionalism.

My friend’s reason for not reporting the theft is that, more and more, the police simply don’t come when called in Barbados, and when they do “take a report”, that’s usually the end of police action. And that is why my friend is part of Commissioner Dottin’s hyped “2 percent drop in crime”. Victims are giving up on reporting minor crimes to the police because the victims perceive it is not worth their trouble.

So if the Commissioner says that Barbados had almost a 2 percent reduction in REPORTED crimes as fewer and fewer police officers patrol, we have to ask: If we eliminated more police officers and had fewer officers to take reports or patrol, wouldn’t that lead to even greater “reductions” in reported crime?

The Commissioner is playing a dangerous game taking credit for the “reduction” in REPORTED crime. To take credit he has to ignore the demographic trends that are causing a reduction in the number of young males (a segment of the population with the highest crime rates) as well as the number of citizens who have given up on reporting minor crimes to our police.

Barbados is a great place to live and is relatively free of major violent crimes of the types seen in for instance, Trinidad. That is a cultural factor as much as anything – but if the police want to take credit for a 2 percent reduction in crime, they had better be prepared to answer how much of that reduction is as a result of citizens giving up on reporting crime to the police.

Further Reading

Top Cop Reports Dip In Crime

“Dear Barbados Free Press,

I thought you’d like to know the reason why past news articles about Terry Schwarzfeld are being removed from the web by Canwest. Ask yourself ‘How much was Barbados Tourism spending with Canwest before the incident? How much is Barbados spending on advertising with Canwest now?’ “

… received as an anonymous email from a BFP reader based in Canada.

“I’m trying to find out if a court date has been set for Curtis Foster, the man accused of killing Canadian Terry Schwarzfeld. I have had no luck getting through to Attorney General’s office. Have you heard anything? Any idea if a trial date has been set? Any help would be greatly appreciated.”

… email to BFP from a Canadian reader.

Making Terry Schwarzfeld Disappear

We hadn’t noticed until we received the anonymous email from Canada, but a Google search shows the truth – many of the Canadian news articles about murdered Canadian tourist Terry Schwarzfeld have been removed from the internet by Canadian news media outlets.

Included in the list of “missing” is the March 8, 2009 Ottawa Citizen article by Bruce Ward Bajan Media Ignores Attack On Women. Online site only outlet to speak out for Schwarzfeld.

Hey, like we always knew… “Money talks”

There has been yet another tragic accident involving a speeding ZR van. The van smashed into two elderly visitors who were crossing Hastings main road near St. Matthias gap on Friday evening 6th Nov 09 around 3.30 pm.

According to a witness, the van was not in sight as the couple set out to cross the road. The van was going so fast on the bend with a full load that it could not stop in time. The two visitors (in their 70’s) were taken away with broken bones and internal injuries. To reach that age and to have the few remaining years destroyed by an aggressive van driver through no fault of your own is sad to the extreme.

Two days before this I was nearly killed by a blue bus on a section of the road with no sidewalk in the same area. The side of the bus actually touched my arm as I leaned against the wall of a house. The bus was doing at least 70k in a 30 mph zone.

This madness has to stop.

As for the ZR.s the system is wrong. The drivers have to make the daily rent for the vehicle before they can pay themselves. This puts a lot of pressure on the driver to try to get passengers any way they can and drive as fast as possible in the busy periods to make as much money as possible. For a public service vehicle this is a conflict of interest putting everybody’s lives at risk.

In lean times, like now, the pressure is even greater.

I gather that we will have more American visitors this year due to Jet Blue etc. I fear for them as they are not accustomed to left hand driving and small roads with no sidewalks.
What will it take for the authorities to build proper sidewalks, enforce the 30 mph speed limit and change the way the ZR.s operate.?

Yours,
Concerned Hastings Resident

(photo of speeding ZR by Shona)

“U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.”

…from ABC News Officials: U.S. Aware of Hasan Efforts to Contact al Qaeda

Why didn’t the US Army or Intelligence Agencies do something about Major Nidal Hasan?

Was it political correctness? Fear of making a decision? Whatever it was, it looks like some person or persons made a decision not to take steps to remove Major Hasan from the US Army even after it was known that he was contacting al Qaeda.

This should be a lesson to government authorities, law enforcement and military leadership everywhere in the West: If there are signs that a Muslim employee has gone fundamentalist, ACT to counter the threat!

Further Reading

Sudden Jihad Syndrome? Muslim terrorist yelled “Allahu Akbar!” during mass murder at Fort Hood.

“I was arrested along with Orlando L. Pardo and Claudia Cadelo they carried us off sicilian style. Knocks. We were left lying in a corner.”

Cuban blogger Yoaní Sánchez (wikipedia link) in an SMS text message to Spanish blogger Rosa Jiménez Cano, who works at the Spanish news daily El País

Photo: Three Men Who Excuse Murder & Oppression of Cubans

Translation of the account posted by Yoaní on her blog

Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. ‘Yoani, get in the car,’ one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence.

The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same ‘aggressors’ called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.

I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, ‘Help, these men want to kidnap us,’ but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, ‘Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.’

In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, ‘What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.’ I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door… blows to my knuckles… I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them…

(snip)

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, ‘What has happened?’… ‘A kidnapping,’ I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Full story at Global Voices – Cuba: Yoani Sanchez & Other Bloggers Seized

Further Reading

Along the Malecon blog: We are all Yoani

What are the functions and objectives of an independent Senator?

During the time the late Sir John Stanley Goddard sat in the Senate he repeatedly called for up-to-date financial statements for Hotels and Resorts Limited to be made available.

After all, it’s a majority Government owned company funded by the taxpayer and surely we have a right to know their current fiscal position?

I understand that HRL’s accounts have now been laid in Parliament
for the subsequent years since 2001, yet why has there seemingly been no Senate debate, discussion or public comment?

Losses for the GEMS project have been quoted at anything from $200 to $400 million, and as yet, no analysis has been in what part in the closure of over 30 private sector hotels over the last fifteen years they have played.

Adrian Loveridge

(Editor’s note: The headline “GEMS cover-up continues under DLP…” was created by Barbados Free Press. The body of the article is exactly as received from Mr. Loveridge)

Below article from the November 12, 2007 Nation News…

THE HOYOS FILE – A GEM OF A FINANCIAL REPORT

by Patrick Hoyos

November 12, 2007

WITH A SORT of morbid fascination, I have been revisiting the shipwreck that was Hotels & amp; Resorts Ltd, the above-ground financial counterpart of the Stavronikita at the end of 2001.

Yes, dear readers, I know this is almost December 2007 – so, you may wonder, what is the point? Well, there really isn’t any except that the 2001 accounts were only recently laid in Parliament along with the remainder of the company’s annual reports from 1997 to 2001, so I thought it would be “interesting” to recap the disastrous position GEMS had found itself in by then.

Writing in the notes to the financial statement for 2001, KPMG stated that “the company incurred a loss for the year ended December 31, 2001 of $22 million and had accumulated a deficit of $60 million at the year-end date. Also at that date, current liabilities exceeded current assets by $51 million. This raises substantial doubt that the company will be able to continue as a going concern without the continued financial support of its shareholders.”

$51 million? How did that happen? Current assets – which were made up of cash in hand as well as trade, VAT and other receivables, prepaid expenses and inventory – totalled a paltry $4.1 million, while current liabilities – the company’s bank overdraft, accounts payable and accrued expenses, a sum due to CRL Ltd, interest-bearing loans and interest payable – totalled $55.6 million. Subtract one from the other.

$150 million from Treasury

Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that Government had to take something like $150 million from the Treasury to clean up the red ink flowing from HRL like water over Niagara Falls. Of course, the sale of a majority stake in BNB to Republic for a similar amount put the money back into the Treasury, so it all got tidied up very nicely – except we sold the majority stake in BNB and had nothing tangible to show for it.Ah well, easy come, easy go.

What can we say positive about GEMS? Well, in the five years it took to build up that $60 million deficit, the company had earned gross revenues (you know, from things like room rentals) of $42 million, and it had paid $29 million in interest on its loans. However, the accounts show that in 2001 the Government lent HRL another near-$10 million to allow it to pay interest on its loans.

Another fun fact about GEMS: its shares at the end of 2001 were worth less than zero; in fact, total shareholder equity was put at MINUS $36 million. Ouch.

And those loans requiring so much interest? A mere $77 million, all but $15 million of it owed to. . . which bank? Yep, you guessed it, good old BNB.
So you see, if you owe the bank and can’t pay, all you have to do is sell the same bank in order to pay it off – except for one little thing: you would have to own the bank in the first place. Again, it all worked out so tidily in the end.

Except that GEMS is still out there, trading (at least its version of trading). Question: is it still creating minuses on its balance sheet for its principal shareholder, the Government of Barbados? How can we have sympathy for Government in this case when it single-mindedly persevered in digging one of the biggest financial holes it has ever dug (and that is probably saying a lot) with this ill-begotten, foolish project?

Remember, this was a project that began as one thing and inexplicably turned into another: GEMS was first envisaged as a sort of co-op to help small hoteliers on the South Coast pool their resources in administration, overhead and marketing; but the deeply indebted hoteliers objected to being corralled instead of letting them sink into the mire of repossession and bankruptcy, so the Owen Arthur administration thought it would be much better to dig a giant hole to throw taxpayers’ money in. The only project rivalling GEMS for nonsensical spending by the administration is probably Greenland.

Arbitration proceedings

Finally, a little snippet on HRL which I must confess I didn’t know about. I must have missed it in the paper, where it was probably Front Page news. At note 13 of the 2001 notes to the financial statement, it is stated: “The company’s former hotel manager, Commonwealth Hospitality Ltd (CHL) has made a claim for an aggregate sum of US$13 583 521 which is the subject of arbitration proceedings.”

CHL suing for nearly US$14 million? Why? The note goes on to say that it was for “wrongful termination of the management agreement between the company and CHL.” However, it adds that HRL believed it was “entitled to terminate the management agreement” and therefore owed CHL nothing. Also, without giving the figures, the note adds that “Various other claims have been made against the company”.

I look forward to the day we will see the next chapter in this intriguing story so that the following questions can be answered: did GEMS finally turn a profit? Did CHL get any money out of it? Is Eastry House sold, refurbished or still in ruins? Was Silver Sands Resort sold off at a profit? How are Timeout at the Gap and the Savannah doing financially? What are the financial projections for those condos being built opposite Timeout, and are they part of the new HRL strategy or a spin-off? Is HRL still a financial drain on the Barbadian taxpayer despite all the dollars sunk into that massive money pit?

Well, it’s only 2007 so I’m looking to see the financials for 2001-2007 sometime in the future, maybe 2015.

I hope I’m still around to hear the rest of the story.

Prior to being appointed to his regulatory position, (current Barbados Supervisor of Insurance) Carlos Belgrave was the General Manager of a local company that manufactures “flour, animal and poultry feeds” … from OffshoreAlert’s 2006 “Worst Regulator” Award

Manulife Case Going To Trial in 2011

The civil court case involving Bajan policy holders who claim they were fleeced by Manulife will finally take place in 2011. Maybe. If the Manulife lawyers don’t do their “delay, delay, delay” thing until witnesses and victims die or move on after a decade of being under the oppression of being denied justice for so long.

If you want some background on the case and to read the court documents, they are posted online at the Sutts, Strosberg lawyers who are handling the class action. Here is their website: Manulife class action website

About That Inadequate Barbados Advocate Story…

“The suit claims that Manulife obtained approval for the sale of its Barbados interests by providing adequate information to the Supervisor of Insurance in Barbados.”

… from The Barbados Advocate article Manulife trial set for 2011

I guess that the reporters at the Advocate didn’t read the court documents about the case because if they did they would know that the plaintiffs are alleging that Manulife provided inadequate information to Barbados Supervisor of Insurance, Wismar Greaves, not “adequate” information as the news story says.

That is a small issue – a word that changes the whole meaning of the story – but it is important.

Lawsuits Cut Two Ways

The larger issue about this story is unreported and unremarked upon by the Barbados news media: lawsuits cut two ways. The defense will undoubtedly claim that the fault lies not with Manulife, but with inadequate and/or incompetent performance by the Barbados Supervisor of Insurance.

In many ways, it will be the Wismar Greaves and our system of oversight that is on trial. Considering that Carlos Belgrave, our current Supervisor of Insurance, received the 2006 Offshore Alert award for “Worst Regulator” – I expect that Manulife will come on strong and aggressively defend this case.

No Sir, this Manulife case will be no “slam dunk”.

Contributed by an anonymous BFP reader

Further Reading

Barbados Supervisor Of Insurance Announces $2,500 Voluntary Fine For Infractions… That Should Stop Multi-Million Dollar Insurance Frauds Like CLICO!

Belgrave named in 2006 as the “worst regulator” by Offshore Alert.

Author and avid Barbados Free Press reader Matt Rigney has a new book coming.

In Pursuit of Giants is the story of one man’s global trek to learn the fate of the ocean’s great fish—marlin, swordfish, and tuna. It is a journey into the history of big game sportfishing and a voyage of discovery to the few remaining locations in the world where these animals still exist in numbers and sizes that hint at their former abundance. It is also an investigation into the failure of fisheries management and an exploration into what must be done to save the world’s fisheries.

The last we heard Matt’s book was ahead of schedule and might even be out in time for the 2010 Christmas buying season. The BFP gang eagerly awaits our first read of In Pursuit of Giants.