Abby Martin interviews Afra Raymond about the corrupt CL Financial – CLICO disaster.

“On the 30th of January 2009… that bailout was wreathed in political corruption because it was discussed and agreed behind closed doors. We later discovered the Minister of Finance who negotiated the bailout is a lady called Karen Nunez-Tesheira, I will call names.

She is an attorney at law, former lecturer of law, and in fact was a shareholder of CL Financial. She was later revealed by my research to be a shareholder of CL Financial that she was negotiating a bailout of.”

“The people who caused this collapse have really gotten away scot-free because the government purchased their debt.”

Afra Raymond to international journalist Abby Martin.

Two-thirds of Caribbean Government money stolen!

If this interview doesn’t rock you about how corrupt your Caribbean governments and politicians be then go back to smokin’ whatever you be smokin’ an doan bother with life.

Afra Raymond tells it like it is to international journalist Abby Martin. It’s all here – the whole history of corruption in the CL Financial collapse and bailout.

Ministers of Government who were CL Financial shareholders gave your public funds to shore up their own interests.

That was the corrupt foundation of the bailout.

I saw this interview on YouTube and had to post it. Don’t know when I’ll be back.

One Love… Cliverton.

Barbados Minister of International Business Donville Inniss: Swiss Bank Account for your online porn business?

Revealed for the first time: Donville Inniss Swiss Money Connection

An interesting article in yesterday’s Nation Newspaper where Donville Inniss, our Minister of International Business, announced that Barbados is fully on board with the US and international efforts to have an automatic exchange of tax information between countries.

Some folks would say that Barbados is caving to the USA’s extortion, but others would say this is the future and welcome to it.

Of course, some folks would also question where the customers are going to come from if keeping money in Barbados is the same as having a bank account in Chicago or London. Why should anyone do their banking in Bim if there is no advantage?

“. . . My ministry has written to the secretary general of the OECD in Paris indicating that Barbados has formally committed to signing on to the automatic exchange of tax information,” Inniss said. “This is important because as a government there is somewhat of a paradigm shift in taking a position that Barbados needs to be a player, and to be seen as a major player in this international financial services sector where it matters most.”

… Nation News Bowing to Global Pressure

What about all Donville’s porn profits?

This concern with international tax treaties is a newish thing for Pornville, er, Donville.

You see, not so many years ago, Barbados Free Press caught out Donville Inniss in the act of profiteering from online pornography.

“One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen is Orgasm.com’s pregnant woman porn section. How does Donville Inniss feel about these desperate young girls – making money for him like this?” 

Pat Hoyos: Plasma gasification will bring economic and environmental disaster to Barbados

“The Government of Barbados has given up all of the country’s future rights to determine its waste to energy management to an unknown company, whose plan is to build a plant using highly dangerous technology that has failed in every attempt made so far to turn garbage into electricity.”

Welcome to Corruption Unlimited

“Barbados has given up all future rights to an Unknown Company…”

Oh yes my childrens… Gather ’round and I’ll spin you a tale of how each Barbados government for the last 30 years has promised to implement integrity legislation and conflict of interest standards, but never did. Never will without serious international pressure.

Owen Arthur promised integrity legislation, but never delivered. Then, on a politician’s salary, PM Owen Arthur donated US$150,000 in after tax dollars to a cricket charity! What a great man!

Then “Goin’ wid Owen” was caught putting campaign donations from corporations into his personal bank account!

No charges though because Barbados doesn’t care about corruption.

PM Thompson Says His Use Of CLICO’s Business Jet Is None Of Your Business

Then the next Prime Minister, David Thompson, through his law firm money laundered $3.3 Million Dollars for his friend Leroy Parris.

And David Thompson and the DLP promised Integrity Legislation.

But they never delivered.

Now Freundel Stuart says “Trust me, trust your government” about the garbage-to-electricity plant.

And Bajans are not allowed to know if any politicians have shares in the companies that will benefit from the Barbados Government contract. 

So… to all the Bajan politicians who aren’t standing up and demanding that the people be allowed to know who is profiting from government contracts… (Censored)

Take it away, Pat Hoyos…

THE HOYOS FILE: Tipping Cahill deal into the dumpster

YOU KNOW THAT A POLICY is dead on arrival when the usually accommodative local chamber of commerce breaks its silence to say so. That, to me, was the big game changer last week. 

Opinion: Freundel Stuart and his DLP are the real destroyers of Barbados

by David Comissiong, President of Clement Payne Movement

If there is a group of inexperienced and irresponsible “leaders” who have done serious damage to our country that group is not to be found in the trade unions of Barbados! Rather, they are to be found in the Freundel Stuart-led Democratic Labour Party administration.

Who – after all – is responsible for the dismissal of close to 5,000 Barbadians from their jobs in the public service of our country?

Who – for the first time in our history – imposed tuition fees on Barbadian students at the University of the West Indies, thereby causing some 4,200 Barbadians to drop out of UWI?

Who is it that recently imposed an additional $200 million in taxes on an already over-taxed and over-burdened Barbadian people?

Who is it that has taken virtually every Governmental contract of any worth and conferred them upon a small select group of elite business people?

Who is it that has entered into contractual arrangements that obligate the masses of Barbadian taxpayers to literally pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a small group of privileged elite business people over the next two or three decades ?

The record is clear! Barbados is being destroyed – not by young Toni Moore and Akanni Mc Dowall – but by Prime Minister Stuart and his band of Ministers, the majority of whom may legitimately be described an immature, callous, irresponsible and rudderless.

How comic it is to hear Stuart complaining that the new President of the NUPW does more talking on behalf of the Union than the General Secretary, when he (Stuart) has absolutely no control over no less than 5 of his Ministers; Donville Inniss, Chris Sinckler, David Estwick, Ronald Jones and Denis Kellman!

Furthermore, if Stuart wants to talk about new wine in old wine skins then we need to tell him that his Administration constitutes a “new wine” that we, the citizens of Barbados, do not recognize!

We all recall and recognize the late Errol Barrow and the Democratic Labour Party that he established. But we do not recognize Mr Stuart’s Democratic Labour Party! The Freundel Stuart – led DLP administration is something totally new in our political culture! Where Mr Barrow’s DLP constructed and nurtured Mr Stuart’s DLP attacks and destroys!

Submitted by David Comissiong, President, Clement Payne Movement

Outrageous, corrupt government contracts are killing Barbados

by David Comissiong, President of Clement Payne Movement

As we approach Barbados’ 50th year of Independence, I am calling on all patriotic Barbadians to join together and make a determined effort to uproot and eradicate the destructive remnants of the “Old Colonial System” that still exist in our supposedly independent nation.

And one particularly odious remnant is that aspect of the “Old Colonial System” that traditionally permitted the social and business elite of Barbados to have compliant members of the political directorate grant them outrageously preferential business and commercial arrangements that allowed them to feed on the substance of the Barbadian State and on the mass of predominantly black labourers, consumers, and – in more recent times- taxpayers!

Just take a cursory look at Barbados’ history and you will see exactly what I mean. From the earliest colonial days, the planter/merchant elite utilized a compliant House of Assembly to, inter alia:- supply themselves with cheap labour by legislating the enslavement of Blacks; grant themselves legal title to the lands they had occupied; give themselves a commercial advantage by prohibiting free Blacks and Coloureds from being able to give evidence in Court against them; control Black labour by enacting a Post- Emancipation “Masters and Servants Act”; prohibit the migration of Black labourers from Barbados; transfer the burden of falling international sugar prices unto the backs of the large black labouring class; use legislation and the Court system to ensure that the lands of bankrupt plantations did not fall into the hands of Blacks; use grant money from the British Government exclusively for the elite sugar planter class; and the list goes on and on.

In more recent “Independence times”, this old colonial phenomenon has been manifesting itself in the practice of predominantly black Parliamentarians and Ministers of Government granting amazingly preferential taxpayer- funded or guaranteed contracts to elite white Barbadian and foreign business-people – contracts that they would never dream of conferring upon black Barbadian business-people!

One such contract is the so-called “Take or Pay Contract” that the current Democratic Labour Party (DLP) administration granted to Mr Bizzy Williams’ Sustainable (Barbados) Recycling Centre Inc (SBRC) in June 2009. Under that contract, we, the taxpayers of Barbados, are obliged to underwrite a guaranteed minimum payment of $22.6 Million per year over a 20 year period to SBRC for the processing or managing of so-called municipal solid waste, whether or not the company is actually called upon to carry out work of the requisite minimum quantity! Thus, under this contract alone, we taxpayers are saddled with a minimum payment of $45 Million over the 20 year period.  

Remembering Campus Trendz and Arch Cot – years later Barbados still doesn’t have a building code

“The criminals threw the firebombs, but it was an irresponsible government, building owner and shop owner that made the firebombs inescapable death.”

Barbados Free Press, September 5, 2012 Campus Trendz deaths: What criminals allowed bars on the windows, no fire exits?

by Cliverton

Almost five years after the Campus Trendz slaughter, sleep does not come easily for my friend. In her mind she still sees the weeping desperate men in the smoke at the rear of Campus Trendz – cursing and yelling as they used hand sledges to break through the brick wall all too slowly. She couldn’t watch any longer, she couldn’t listen to the screams any longer and there was nothing the girl could do so she walked away. That haunts her to this day.

Pearl Amanda Cornelius, 18, Kelly Ann Welch, 24, Shanna Griffith, 18, Nikita Belgrave, 23, Tiffany Harding, 23 and Kellisha Ovivierre, 24, burned to death because two evil men robbed the store and smashed flaming bottles of petrol. That is one of the causes of their deaths.

The other cause of their deaths is that Barbados has no enforceable building code. Folks just build as they want to, with no standards as to amount of steel or how rebar is connected. No standards as to fire exits or alternate fire exits through windows. Campus Trendz was a deathtrap from the moment it was constructed, and six young women died because Barbados had no building code to protect them.

Similarly an entire family died at ArchCot when a powerful family (BLP leader Mia Mottley’s family) invested in land over a known cave. How the prohibition against building over the known cave was lifted was never really explained to the public. Just another of those magical Bajan processes very similar to how a BLP Government Minister came to live in a house built on private land that had been expropriated for government purposes.

That Barbados has no building code makes it easier for the corruption and the corrupt to thrive and profit.

Joke of the day… Senator Jepter Ince promises DLP government will invest oil revenues for the people of Barbados

“Government is looking at how best we can take those monies and invest those monies for the people of Barbados,” Senator Jepter Ince told the gathering in the Unity Bar at DLP headquarters in Belleville, St Michael.

“It is not going to be a free-for-all – live as you like because the country got a lot of money. It’s not going to happen because once you border on that and you don’t prepare for further down the road you’re going to have problems and my opinion is once [the oil exploration] goes well, continue to build Barbados, continue to build our people.”

Nation News No Wild Spending

You remember Senator Jepter Ince, don’t you?

Senator Ince’s Qualifications?

Qualifications? Hell – he should be under investigation for the CLICO Fund debacle!

Wuhloss!

This man is talking about protecting Bajans by properly investing our yet-to-exist oil revenues. Jepter Ince – who destroyed the life savings of countless old folks by advising them to invest in CLICO. Jepter Ince, who advised old folks to mortgage their home to borrow money to invest in the future with CLICO.

That Jepter Ince.

Ince was appointed by now-dead PM David Thompson – probably to keep him quiet.

CLICO and CL Financial. What a scam – including money laundering by Prime Minister Thompson from a company where insiders took bribes to have the company purchase land for way more than market value.

Mr. Ince, why don’t you tell us what returns you’ve achieved for your clients since you created the CLICO Balanced Fund in 2000?

How did all those folks do who borrowed money from you to invest in your fund so you could put that money back into Clico? Huh? How did they do?

Ineptocracy – “A system of government, historically founded in Barbados and now widely available elsewhere…”

Ineptocracy

Every once in a while somebody hits it right out of the park…

This is not yet found in the  Oxford  dictionary, but I bet it will be in the next edition, so it was “Googled” and discovered to be a recently “coined” new word found on T-shirts on eBay:

Read what it says slowly, and just absorb the facts that are within the definition!

I love this word and believe that it will become a recognized English word – used frequently in Barbados if not in the rest if of the English speaking world.

Finally, a brand new word to describe our Future… Love it!

Ineptocracy

A system of government, historically founded in Barbados and now widely available elsewhere, where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Our thanks to Colin Beadon and Mike Frost from Trinidad, now living in Australia.

Ping Yark: Michael Carrington should resign, but the Prime Minister is protecting his friend

(click cartoon to enlarge)

Michael Carrington: Lawyer. Member of Parliament. Speaker of the House.

This guy has got more front more front than Harrods!

It was not until he was ordered by the High Court to return $250k to a client that he did so. Recently though the man has had the audacity to imply it is he who is the victim … and has publicly stated he paid the money back so can’t understand what all the fuss is about!

Really, Mr. Carrington?

Mr. Joe Public or any of his relatives would’ve been incarcerated long ago for theft – another lawyer was recently disbarred for very similar breaches …but this guy seems to have escaped punishment, sanction or even investigation by either the government or the Bar Association. Carrington remains an MP, a lawyer and Speaker of the House despite local and international demands for his resignation.

We can only speculate why Michael Carrington still in post – so here goes – maybe he excels so spectacularly but quietly behind the scenes that he is rendered absolutely irreplaceable …or maybe he has really important and powerful friends… or maybe he knows where the cupboards are that hides lots and lots and lots of skeletons …or maybe… it’s all the above!

Michael Carrington should resign – common decency demands it – but what would he do then? Punters wanting legal services, in property matters especially, will learn that it would be the height of folly to trust Michael with a cocoa bean let alone a red cent – so lawyering is out. Google or any half decent search engine will help see to that – all that’s left for him is politics, for now. Hopefully though the electorate will remember when that time comes around again.

So Michael: Do the reputation of the DLP, the country and yourself a massive favour … and sod off!

The new issue of Ping Yark has hit the streets. Always irreverent, always interesting to Bajans at home and over and away.

Download the PDF right here…  Ping Yark 4 megabytes

For a guy who wants to make Barbados a republic without a referendum, PM Stuart sure calls the kettle, well, you know…

Stuart accuses Beckles of running alternative government

Anything to avoid mentioning that Stuart and his government lied about bringing Integrity Legislation to Barbados.

Solution to vote buying in Barbados – Pay a US$500 reward for proof

We can argue all day about what the average price of a bought vote is on this rock, but in an unofficial drunken poll on a Friday night at Oistins my friends say it’s a little lower than what many folks believe.

US$100 is what it is so they say. Yup. One hundred good old American will do the job.

And how big a problem is vote buying in Barbados?

Vote buying shapes elections, governments, national policies and the economy. It levers power elites into power and keeps them there.

Lately many folks have been talking that a reward would increase the risk of buying votes and drive the price into the stratosphere. I think that’s a good idea. It costs nothing to implement and it just might work.

So let’s do it. Let’s offer a goodly reward for reporting and proving vote buying. Let’s increase the risk so much for these bastards that they won’t dare and can’t afford to buy votes.

Let’s pay US$500 for proof of vote buying. Hidden cameras are so small and can be everywhere these days.

Yup. Let’s do it!

“The recent declaration that PM Froon intends to go republic has been met with almost universal disdain. How can a government which has made a mess of virtually every facet of Barbadian life expect to be entrusted with such a task? No republic without referendum. Let the people decide.”

“Say the going bribe rate for a vote is $300, Peter Wickham would pay $600 for a voter to testify against a briber. If the fellows play this right, they could end up getting $900 for their vote, $300 from one candidate and $600 to testify against the other. Since the cases will no doubt be thrown out, it’s win-win all around.”

THE LOWDOWN: Parpissitatory horizontality

Land use, land theft, backroom deals a worry for small Caribbean island nations

How long must ordinary Bajans put up with corrupt politicians compulsorily acquiring private lands – to be converted into private profits for the political elites and their friends?

“Sobbing uncontrollably, his mother said she was afraid that her house and land would be taken away.” (Nation News)

“A small State such as Trinidad & Tobago must accord a very high priority to the judicious management and utilization of its land resources or perish. All elements of land policy must must be designed to ensure that these finite resources are efficiently utilized and husbanded in such a manner as to serve the long term interests of the national community.”

—Conclusion of “A New Administration and Policy for Land” (19 November, 1992)

Afra Raymond’s new piece Our Land talks about the same problems we have in Barbados with greedy elites using public and private lands like their own little piggy bank.

Between crooked lawyers scamming little old ladies like Violet Beckles, and Bajan politicians doing backroom deals, land ownership is a dangerous jungle out there.

Any Bajan has heard the stories and sometimes read the news…

– A relative of a Government Minister ends up with a building lot after an expropriation.

– An official advises his cousin to buy a piece of useless land, and six months later the government expropriates the land and pays a very good price – far more than the original purchase price. Who knew that a new road was to be built there? Don’t ask!

– For fifteen years, a farmer tries unsuccessfully to re-zone his land for housing, but then gives up and sells out. Thirty days after the new owner (and friend of government) buys the farm, the zoning approval comes through and the land is now worth millions. No one knows who the real shareholders are.

– Prime land is expropriated for “low income” government-sponsored housing, and eleven months later a Government Minister moves into a new home in the “low income housing” sub-division. Of course, his girlfriend owns the home – not the Minister. (Barbados Government Minister Gline Clarke – House and Mercedes on Expropriated Land)

– “Back door” land expropriations where building permissions are denied for no good reason until the owner gives up or goes bankrupt over unpaid land taxes. While one arm of the government refuses permission to build, the other arm expropriates for back-taxes… and the land eventually ends up in the hands of a friend of the government.

– When a politician gets his eyes on your land… it’s all over. Corrupt Barbados politicians prepare to expropriate widow’s land – probably for personal profits

… and on and on and on. Then when the citizens start ignoring the laws, the elites wonder about the state of the world.

“We can never move forward as a nation until we have men/women of integrity running our country – that is our problem, and it cannot be said too often.

Until then we will always be second raters, puffing and panting on the world stage with a veneer of progress, but the condos, concrete palaces and circumscribed greens of the golf courses which are admired, will not be our own. We will be strangers in the land of our birth, Oh! how our forefathers must weep, as to what has become of us.

So much pain, for so little gain, a pain “perpetuated” by those who felt the same warm confines, of the womb from whence we came.” Yardbroom, August 2007

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves lied about Argyle International Airport

When you lie to the Business Investors you ‘Own the lies’ when it all goes wrong

by Peter Binose

When Ralph Gonsalves announced the finish and operational dates for the Argyle International Airport, we must ask ourselves if he knew each of those dates was unachievable. I like many others believe he did know that the completion dates he gave us were not just unachievable, he knew that such statements were downright lies.

When you tell lies sooner or later your very own lies will come back and bite you in the arse, as the old folk would say.

Saying the airport would definitely be up and running by 2011 may very well have caused all sorts of business people who were ardent followers of Gonsalves, to invest money in their business’s to take advantage of the upswing in trade that the same Gonsalves claimed would follow the airport opening.

He also told the people that he would build a city on the Arnos Vale site when the air traffic was transferred to Argyle. He said the new city would be linked to the old city of Kingstown by a four lane tunnel under the hill, it doesn’t matter that approaching the tunnel from either end it would only be one lane. The whole matter was embroidered to wind the business people into spending money.

Hotels in Villa who are ULP supporters have invested fortunes in upgrading their family owned hotels in anticipation of the Gonsalves forecast of a huge surge in stop over’s and business in general.

People like Ken Boyer borrowed money from banks to build his supermarket and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, why? because as a cousin to Gonsalves he believed that Gonsalves would finish the airport by 2011 and the new city would be finished five years after that in 2016. Ken was a little silly because he should have known better than most of Gonsalves ability to make things up, to embroider the truth and make it into blatant lies.

The Harlequin Buccament Bay Project based all its plans on the airport opening in 2011, they have also been shafted and they must be seriously in danger of folding because the airport is the key to much of their projected business. They were made promises and are now suffering from lies.

The List: major drug dealers in Barbados who work with corrupt police, politicians

Drug dealers, corrupt politicians and bad cops

Who made this list?

Sheri Veronica, that’s who. And she ties it to vote buying in Barbados elections.

That woman has stones.

And she’s pretty too!

Sheri Veronica’s blog: Barbados: Bad cops, Corrupt politicians and drug lords

 

Afra Raymond questions the motivations of Trinidad & Tobago’s Integrity Commission

Shocking behaviours by those entrusted to investigate corruption

by Afra Raymond

This column sets out my reasons for seriously questioning the motivation and priorities of the Integrity Commission. Despite my doubts as to the way in which successive Commissions have operated the Integrity in Public Life Act (IPLA), I have continued to offer suggestions as to how their work could be made more effective.

The continuing Code of Silence on the CL Financial bailout, the sharp attack, from many quarters, on our substantial national institutions and the very doubtful history of the Integrity Commission are clear signs that the Public Interest needs to be safeguarded with utmost vigilance at this time.

In relation to the Commission’s history, we need to note the shocking details unearthed during Dr Keith Rowley’s litigation against them. The Commission had made certain findings without giving Rowley the opportunity to respond, as recommended by its advisers and in 2009 the High Court made an historic finding that…

“…The Court declares that the Integrity Commission has acted in bad faith in relation to Dr. Rowley and is guilty of the tort of misfeasance in public office…”

At Para 45 (i) of the 2009 ruling –

“…The Court does not accept the Integrity Commission’s explanation as to why it wrote to the Honourable Prime Minister on the 19th October, 2004, to ascertain whether an inquiry was to be undertaken and if so, the names of the persons to man the enquiry and their terms of reference. The Court notes that the Integrity Commission is an independent constitutional body which ought to act independently pursuant to its constitutional and statutory powers and duties…”

The entire Commission resigned immediately as a result of that High Court ruling.

… continue reading this article at Afra Raymond’s blog Integrity Reflections

Sales persons are liable for Harlequin pension losses!

Oh boy!

“Financial advisers who recommended clients switch their pensions into self-invested schemes heavily exposed to investments being marketed by embattled overseas property group Harlequin are legally liable for losses, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme confirmed…”

… from the Financial Times article Advisers are liable for Harlequin pension transfer losses

Yup…

Do them. Do them all. Lead them away in handcuffs and beat them on the way to jail.

Lives ruined. Pensions devoured.

Barbados politicians played a pivotal role as enablers for David Ames and his gang. Do them all.

CLICO INSURANCE: THE PERFECT CRIME

Sheri Veronica says…

“CLICO has become the poster child for all that is wrong in Barbados. The people know that elite wrongdoers are well protected – they have the protection of the police and the government.

The stench of corruption and the grandstanding of sanctimonious, arrogant, lawless and contemptuous elite engulf the people. Citizens are arming themselves, shooting at police and committing more grievous crimes. With millions of dollars stolen and no real hope of its recovery, approximately 20,000 seniors are at risk of poverty. And finally, as has been alluded to above, hardly ever are elites incarcerated in BARBADOS.”

All we at BFP can add to that is… Amen, sister! Amen.

The government we deserve…

Many of our politicians have fallen short of their promises, or have done great injury to their stewardship. In some cases, they have shown to be less than scrupulous in their management of our affairs. Yet we reward them with more time for embarrassment. Our only excuse, perhaps, is that within the context of our democracy there must be a Government –– good, bad or indifferent.

But how can we explain retaining any Government that seizes land compulsorily and breaches the law by refusing to pay for it? How can we contemplate returning the same Government to power that squanders more than $300 million on failed projects? How can we give succour to any leader who fails to discipline a parliamentary colleague brought to public shame by the highest court in the land?

How can we forgive any Government that has ravaged our agriculture sector? How can we forgive politicians who facilitate construction contracts without a bidding process? How can we be satisfied with leadership that doesn’t boast of achievements, but wallows in lofty verbosity, smug claims of not reading newspapers and punishing dissenters with laughter?

How can we not ask for accountability in situations where some politicians possess six high-end cars, obtained on Government salaries that are common knowledge in the Official Gazette? How can millions of dollars be spirited away from an insurance company and our Attorney General not demand a criminal investigation by the police? How can a state-appointed insurance supervisory body fail to carry out its mandate to the detriment of thousands of policyholders and no heads roll? How can an Auditor General annually expose instances of fraud and blatant theft and yet no one is held to account?

… read the entire editorial at Barbados Today – Getting the governance we deserve