Secret CL Financial bailout of 325 very special shareholders

“If the CL Financial group is insolvent, then how are we paying for all this? Yes, that is the big question.”

“For the record, no one from the previous government or the Central Bank, for that matter, has ever even attempted to justify the rotten terms of this bailout.  Not even an attempt to explain the interest-free, unlimited, unsecured loan to that lucky group of 325 CL Financial shareholders.”

What is this campaign?

by Afra Raymond

We are witness to a second wave of assault on our Treasury.  Let us be sure, those of us who are not in line to benefit directly from the bailout, that the picture is complicated and it contains perils for the entire country.

The original bailout was an unjustifiable and colossal facility granted to the CL Financial Chiefs and the shareholders of that failed, privately-owned, group. I say facility because the taxpayers’ money in our Treasury was pledged to repay the debts of the CL Financial group.

The deal was hatched in secret. The fact is, upon reflection, its terms were never formally debated in our Parliament.

Advertisements

Kidnapper of Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs returning to Barbados

Bajan extradition order against Freddie Prime lifted after 29 years.

The last time Freddie Prime visited Barbados was in January of 2009. His vacation lasted until he reached the Immigration desk where officers arrested the 80 year old grandfather and then shoved him back onto the same airplane he’d arrived on – now heading home to the UK.

The trouble for Mr. Prime began in 1981 when he was part of a group of ex-soldiers who kidnapped escaped Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs from his hiding spot in Brazil. They spirited him away to Barbados thinking that our government would extradite Biggs back to the UK. Prime and his team thought wrong.

Biggs ended up going back to Brazil and Freddie Prime and the other kidnappers were ordered deported from Barbados on March 27, 1981.

Some 28 years later in January of 2009 Barbados Immigration hadn’t forgotten about the extradition order against Mr. Prime, so when he arrived for a vacation he was summarily turfed from Barbados.

All is forgiven