By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
The special purpose vehicle (SPV) created to relieve Bank of the Bahamas of $100 million in ‘bad’ commercial loans must be given “a chance to work”, a Cabinet Minister has urged.
Michael Halkitis, minister of state for finance, said the Government had nothing to report on Bahamas Resolve because it was still in the “early stages’ of its asset recovery efforts.
While some have questioned why there was no mention of Bahamas Resolve in the 2015-2016 Budget address by Prime Minister Perry Christie, Mr Halkitis said it and Deloitte & Touche (Bahamas), the accounting firm engaged to help collect on the $100 liability now owed to Bahamian taxpayers, were still in the early stages of their work.
“They have just started. In a little while we will be able to bring a report. We have had a meeting or two but, mind you, we need to give them a chance to work and then we will bring a report. I just think it’s still too early at this point,” Mr Halkitis told Tribune Business.
Last October, Mr Christie announced a plan to help the struggling Bank of the Bahamas by establishing Bahamas Resolve, a new state-owned and controlled company that would assume liability for $100 million worth of the bank’s non-performing commercial loans.
Former Central Bank governor, James Smith, was chosen to head Bahamas Resolve’s Board of Directors. The Government is the 65 per cent majority shareholder of Bank of the Bahamas.
Last December, the Government confirmed that Deloitte & Touche had been selected as the accounting firm charged with collecting on the 13 commercial loans that comprise the $100 million debt.
Comments
GrassRoot 8 years, 10 months ago
early stages or not does not matter. it is either an asset or a liability. Why would this be an off balance sheet asset?
Well_mudda_take_sic 8 years, 10 months ago
Articles published in The Punch in December 2013 informed the Bahamian public that Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) had made the following loans and advances connected to political friends and cronies of Perry Christie:
• $28 million to Leslie Miller and/or entities owned by him and/or members of his immediate family. • $3.5 million to Obie Wilchcombe & Pleasant Bridgewater re. Universal Distributors Bahamas Ltd., a company apparently now defunct for all intents and purposes. • $8 million to another senior PLP cabinet minister, rumoured to be pudgy with short stubby grubby dirty sticky fingers. • $6.3 million to PLP business woman Patricia Mortimer who purportedly is a best friend and business partner of Lady Poodling and the owner of several shops at Nassau International Airport. • $2.3 million re. GEMS Radio Station which at the time was owned by Debbie Bartlett and Cyprianna McWeeney, the latter being the wife of PLP lawyer Sean McWeeney who is the brother of Paul McWeeney. • $4.5 million to enterprises owned/controlled by Edward Penn. • $4.6 million to Phil Lightbourne re. Phil's Food Services (Phil Lightbourne was the front man and spokesman for Ben Frisch who owned Bahamas Food Services up until the PM allowed the Frisch Family to sell it to Sysco Foods (a large U.S. public company) in April 2013.
BOB is majority owned and controlled by the Bahamas government; accordingly its overall business affairs fall directly within the portfolio of Perry Christie as both PM and Minister of Finance. Most, if not all, of the above loans and advances had to be fully provided for by BOB, and have since been either likely written off by BOB or transferred to Bahamas Resolve at great cost to hard working honest Bahamian taxpayers. Small wonder that Perry Christie was only too quick to come to the defense of McWeeney for having so handsomely rewarded the PM's political friends and business cronies!
I also recollect the PM being only too quick to come to the defense of tax dodgers and dead beat debtors like Ishmael Lightbourne and Lady Poodling. In the case of Ishmael Lightbourne the PM readily admitted that he had phoned the managing director of CIBC First Caribbean Bank in an effort to wrongfully intercede in that bank’s seizure by mortgage foreclosure proceedings of Ishmael Lightbourne’s seaside mansion on West Bay Street. No doubt Christie would have been similarly inclined to contact certain members of BOB’s board of directors and senior management in order to intercede in the making of loans and advances on very generous terms to his political friends and business cronies. All of these shenanigans on the part of Perry Christie clearly evidence that he has a very twisted moral compass by any standard. It is therefore absolutely frightening to think that this warped man has cabinet responsibility as both PM and Minister of Finance for our country's financial affairs.
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