NBS, CLICO and the war on poor people

Mar 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I ask you to read this quote from this newspaper from the Minister of Finance three times. Yes, three times. Let it soak in and you will see that a nasty conspiracy is involved in the impending explosion of/implosion in CLICO that involves powerful political actors whose interest was to protect a superrich clique in this country at the expense of some of the hardest workers you can find anywhere in the world – the Guyanese labouring masses. This quote is taken from yesterday’s Kaieteur News, page 7.

This is what Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had to say; “These investments were all short-term ones and the most recent request for the return of the money was made by way of letter to Ms Gardier early last month.” Who is Ms. Gardier? She is the CLICO big-wig in the Bahamas that the Minister of Finance was in contact with.
Here is the Finance Minister acknowledging that, as early as the beginning of February, high officials in the Cabinet knew that CLICO was in trouble. We come now to NBS. The Board of NBS and the Government of Guyana have an overlapping relationship because some Board members hold sensitively important roles in the nerve centre of the Government.

It is logical to assume, then, that a few members of the NBS Board knew that CLICO was heading for quicksand. No sensible person will then want to touch that sinking company. Here is what NBS did. It purchased for over a billion dollars CLICO’s share in the Berbice Bridge just a few weeks ago even though it was possessed of the knowledge that CLICO was in distress. If CLICO was falling, and as a foreign company in Guyana it had invested in the Berbice Bridge, then the collapsed company could only have benefited Guyana, since that sum of money invested by CLICO would not be a burden on the bridge authorities to repay. This is commonsense. John lends Mary a million dollars. John dies. Mary does not to worry about paying back.

This, of course, is controlled cynicism on my part, because the original investment by CLICO in the bridge had to come from somewhere, and it stands to reason that those people who invested in CLICO would lose their money if CLICO ended up not getting a return from the Berbice Bridge.
Here is the part where patriotism comes into play. The CLICO investment in the Berbice waterway structure originated from NIS funds. One must understand that Guyana stands to gain nothing from CLICO’s failure to recap its investment in the Berbice structure because it was NIS money that went in that construction.
The question that the opposition parties, the private media and Guyanese stakeholders have to reflect on is: Why did NBS choose to buy out CLICO’s Berbice portfolio? That unprecedented decision had to come from the Board and not management. Management manages. It does not make policies. Now brace yourself for when politics meets economics.

I am willing to say I am wrong about the contours of this business deal but, until I see clarifications (NBS is utterly silent), my contestation is that either a powerful person or a group of powerful political actors got NBS to buy CLICO’s bridge shares so that their friends’ investment in CLICO could have been returned to them.
In other words, trading on the information they got from inside the world of CLICO, these people knew that CLICO was drowning and moved to protect the cabal they are part of. Poor people will suffer because CLICO has lost money.

Despite all the talk that pensioners and investors will be given back their money, the question is where are those numbers going to come from. This optimistic bandwagon is a stratagem to placate people and prevent the boiling over of anger. The point is CLICO has lost a prodigious sum and the result will be personal tragedies for lots of Guyanese.
This is where Guyana becomes a different scenario from the rest of the CARICOM region. In no other Caribbean country has there been a finger pointed at the involvement of ruling politicians in the unfolding financial nightmare that is smothering the global economy.

The NBS conspiracy is the closest thing we have to Watergate. I urge all Guyanese to start investigating this scandal. Why did NBS do what it did? Who authorised NBS to do it? Where is that money that NBS paid to CLICO? In tracing that money, we will discover that some people do not love Guyana.
An Englishman once wrote that “patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel”.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News