Misdeeds, Misconduct, and Abuse-1995 to 1999.
The Central Government’s wage bill alone escalated to over 28 MILLION in 4½ years from 1995 to 1999! And sons, daughters, wives, and husbands were given jobs, contracts, and parts of the Government, its lands and other assets like hot bread. UWP nepotism tou pas tou!
At the same time the UWP summarily executed some of their political enemies. The UWP disbanded Dominica Banana Growers Association to politically execute Jeff Scotland, and at DBS, UWP henchmen concocted, and very cleverly, a master plan to drive Johnson Jno-Rose into exile “dead or alive.” In his place the UWP imposed an UWPite called Angelo Allen, Mr. Dread and the Baldhead, all in one, a former feared policeman disguised as a newsman of some expertise!
The dishonest game of political interference continued at the Customs and Excise Division and Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force where good men and women were leapfrogged or sidelined because of parochial politics. UWP-ites were placed in all positions of power and influence!
Mr. Edison James in his role as “The Political Head of the Plantation” referred with his usual arrogance to civil servants as shirkers and jerkers!
The UWP granted CDC, the future owners of Domlec, total and complete exemption in 1996 from all taxes and duties on the spurious promise of investments in the international airport.
The UWP followed that act of generosity with the sale of Domlec for about 21 Million after Coopers & Lybrands’ analysis of the fiscal assumptions, which were enacted into law to guarantee substantial revenue to CDC, showed that Domlec was valued at over 50 MILLION dollars! The excuse? The UWP needed to pay civil servants! The 21 million dollars lasted less than 5 days in the Treasury!!
Money, Money, Money!
While the country was sinking to its knees with reckless and incompetent and suffocating debt, the Leaders of the UWP looked out for themselves and their friends!
The AID Bank setup a Capital Venture Fund for small businesspeople. The Fund was intended for the masses. But how wrong we were! The UWP facilitated the rape of the Venture Capital Fund so that their bankrupt UWP friends could get their hands on desperately needed cash. The poor and small business men and women were left out in the cold.
However that did not create a problem of conscience for the “workers”. King Massa, Mr. Edison James, entrenched on his banana plantation in the northeast and town house amongst the bourgeoisie in the south, got State lands in direct violation of the State Lands Act and Regulations. He then signed HIMSELF an application form as Director/Secretary of North Eastern Quarries Ltd to get money from the Venture Capital Fund. Mr. Edison James stated, in writing, that North Eastern Quarries Ltd’s COMPLETE business plan and moneymaking enterprise consisted of GOVERNMENT PROJECTS including the international airport. Wickedness! Corruption! The fact that a Prime Minister would use confidential Cabinet information, take State Lands in breach of the law, apply for capital and loans act at a Government financial institution, and essentially tie up government projects for his personal benefit is ABUSE OF OFFOICE and CORRUPTION!!
Aided no doubt by a sympathetic majority of UWP-ites on the Board of Directors at the Aid Bank, and a coincidentally timed and friendly letter to the Board to use ROC funds instead of the more difficult to access EU funds, Massa James almost got the money! By the Grace of God elections came and Massa James was driven out of office and into the alligator farm before he could put his hands on it.
The AID Bank was not the only focus of the UWP’s rampage. Between 1995 and 2000 companies owned or controlled by members and key supporters of the UWP obtained about 8-10 MILLION dollars in loans from the National Commercial Bank, with insufficient security like insurance policies, unfulfilled promises, and empty promises personal guarantee! At least one of the companies had already owed AID Bank money it could not repay!!!
Now out of public office, Antilles Cement Limited and the company owned by the close friend and confident are bankrupt owing MILLIONS to the National Commercial Bank!
The abuse of the public office by the Leaders of the UWP is made worse by Cabinet or “political” decisions made by the UWP which ensured that building supplies for most projects had to be bought from Antilles Cement Limited. Antilles Cement Company Limited and Mr. Norris Prevost also benefited from obvious Cabinet insider information when building materials imported by Antilles Cement Company Limited were left at the port in order to take advantage of the imminent reduction or exemption of duties on building material which was going to take place. As a result, the Government lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in duty!
Mr. Norris Prevost’s Antilles Cement Company Ltd’s privileges did not end there. An OECS organization was required by the UWP Government to move from its earlier location, and rent office space in Prevo Mall at a higher rent than was previously being paid to the previous landlord. The obligation to find office space and pay rent rested with the UWP Government. Prior to the move, significant refurbishing of Prevo Mall took place. We want to know who paid for that!
Another example of UWP bacchanal and bobols concerns DOWASCO. The correspondence and records including a letter from the former Chairman Mr. Donald Christopher shows that the then Minister of Communications and Works attended a DOWASCO Board Meeting and “agreed” that Dowasco should take over the responsibility for the Castle Comfort/Beau Bois water supply when that responsibility belonged, in law and by agreement, to a company owned by three Top UWP-ites including Mr. Norris Prevost. The documents also show that Dowasco executed the works at no cost to the company owned by the UWP-ites. The Minister’s intervention to assist the UWP-ites came after Dowasco provided an estimate to the company for the execution of the very works. Why was the estimate not accepted??
But that’s not all. The European Union (“EU”) decided to fund a water distribution project for the Calinago people. The UWP contravened and violated every single one of the European Union Tendering Rules and gave the contract to supervise the works to one of their own party man without tender. The former Chairman of Dowasco, a UWP-ite and one of the boys, was given a contract to “supervise” the works with no tenders. When the European Union discovered what the UWP did after January 2000, they immediately suspended the project at the Carib Territory, and demanded a complete revaluation of the project. Needless to say, the Coalition Government had to expend a great deal of taxpayers’ money to get the water project back on track. A large amount of money was paid to the UWPite for the supervision of the works.
One would have thought enough was enough. But no, the UWP controlled Dowasco “ordered” pipes for the Giraudel/Eggleston water project from Antilles Cement Company Limited for $317,755.00. That was done although no contract existed. In addition, before any survey or bill of quantities for the intended project was completed, Dowasco paid $153,877.50 to Antilles Cement Company Limited as a down payment between September 1999 and the elections in January 2000. But before that sordid deal, Dowasco had imported pipes itself at much lower prices! Bacchanal and bobols tou pas tou!!
To add insult to injury, the same Minister of Works executed a contract with a Trinidadian company called Decker Construction to build a road and bridge at Watton Waven. The contract total was valued at approximately 5.2 Million. Decker then turned around and gave a sub-contract to Public Works to execute most if not all of the works under the contract for about 2 Million. To this day, Decker still owes substantial sums to Public Works notwithstanding that ……………………….paid them in cash and debenture bonds! The reason for the sub contract is clear. Decker was never a construction company, had never built roads or bridges before, and was never a member of the Contractor’s Council of Trinidad and Tobago. And as for the Petit Savanne guard rails, and the guarantee signed and given to the National Commercial Bank for a UWP friend to get money, buy goods, and the sell the same goods back to Government!!!!Next publication for that one!!
A similar thread of recklessness, deception, and greed runs through the saga of the international airport. The UWP got friendly experts from Trinidad called Planning and Stantec to carry out studies upon which the UWP relied and great sums expended. We have waited on years for Mr. Edison James to tell us about Planning and Stantec’s experience in designing international airports!!!
After the 2000 elections, the European Union and World Bank prepared reviews of the studies and reports prepared by Planning and Stantec, which were obtained by the UWP. The experts at the European Union and World Bank said essentially that the studies and reports were not worth the paper they were written on. They said that the studies and reports were over stated and seriously flawed, and that the proposed international airport was not technically or financially feasible. In October 2001 the Oxford Management Policy referred to the proposed international airport as “ill advised”!
That’s just part of the political crime inflicted on us. The greater political crime committed against Dominicans for generations to come, lies with the so-called attempt to “finance the airport.” The UWP came up with the Trinidad Bonds because Massa James wanted to create the illusion of stability and economic growth among the people from high priced and reborrowed money from the Bonds! But between June 1999 and December 1999 the UWP spent over 88,000.000,00 dollars of the Bond money without one stone or block for the airport being built!
But the 88,000.000,00 million spent between June 1999 and December 1999 was not all of the Bonds moneys incurred by the UWP. The UWP allowed RBTT and CITIBABK to keep 26 MILLION DOLLARS from the Bond Issues to “invest” in the Sinking and Debt Reserve Funds. That 26 million forms part of the amounts presently owed by the Government! So when you add the 26 million to the 88 million you will see that the UWP had incurred up over 110 million of the Trinidad Bonds before the 2000 elections. This Government now owes 127 million plus 14 million dollars a year in interest and other managerial and trustee charges!
In view of all of the facts, the IMF in 1998/9 not only warned the UWP that the Government could never afford to build an international airport on commercial loans, but based on what the UWP had told them, the proposed international airport would cost an ADITIONAL $100 MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS! Something that this country could never obtain or afford! The record shows that UWP defaulted on the very FIRST interest payment due RBTT in Trinidad.
The UWP was warned about the airport, stadium, and Bonds. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (the “ECCB”), World Bank, IMF, Caribbean Development Bank, every rational person, institute, and institution warned the UWP that in view of the collapsing economy and deteriorating fiscal condition, Dominica simply could not afford the Bonds from the Trinidad and Tobago banks, and that the Bonds will seriously cripple Dominica’s finances. The numerous warnings were brushed aside, and the UWP went ahead and borrowed money they knew would drive this great land of ours over the cliff of bankruptcy and cause incalculable suffering to our people. And when we consider that the National Commercial Bank and Social security invested in the CITIBANK Bond Issue so that Citibank could lend us back our money at high commercial rates, some one must be made to pay for that!
But while Dominica was collapsing, and on the verge of bankruptcy, what was the King Massa Edison James doing? He was setting up North Eastern Quarries Ltd to scavenge and profit off the backs of the taxpayers, and God only knows who else was doing the same. Just weeks before the 2000 elections Massa James and the rest of his Gang sold lands to friends at Woodfordhill! Just like the UWP did when the Jimmit road was being built! More on that another time!
The stadium is another tragic victim of the fraud of tou-pas-tou-ism. The UWP created the illusion that a stadium was at hand. But once the UWP hand was opened there were no cards, only tricks up their sleeves. There were no plans, no feasibility study, no quantity surveys, and no financing in place. The UWP signed a contract with a Venezuelan company, and UWP started breaking ground just before the elections. Just read the last UWP Budgets. Not one budget line item or approval from Parliament to complete the construction of the Stadium. Instead, the UWP incurred and spent over 100 plus million of the bond and other monies between June and December 1999 on paying debts, some land owners, and papering over the collapsing economy. It was left to Honourable Roosevelt Skerritt to find grant money to build the National Stadium at no cost to the people of the land.
Deception; Part of the Master Plan
Ross University
Deception too comes as part of the UWP package. In opposition, the Political Massas of the UWP have said that this Coalition Government gave Ross University the right to build private accommodations for students. The obvious reason is to cause anger in Portsmouth. But the statement is a lie. The Dominica Freedom Party signed agreements with Ross before 1995 but Ross was expressly prohibited from building houses for students and no duty free concessions were accordingly granted. Then comes the UWP. The Grand Massa Leader, Mr. Edison James as Prime Minister, signed an agreement and removed the DFP’s express prohibition on construction of accommodations for students, thereby giving Ross University the legal right to construct accommodations for students!
Layou River
It’s the same UWP policy of deception and flip flopism with the Layou River Hotel Project. The UWP signed two agreements with Grace Tung in 1995 and 1996. The UWP allowed the program to continue until they were booted out of town in January 2000. Now, languishing in political limbo the UWP are trying to lay blame at the feet of this Government and demand a public inquiry. The joke lies in the fact that this Coalition Government never signed any agreement with Grace Tung, and the UWP had 4 ½ years to conduct an Inquiry! They did nothing!!
The Re Engineered Citizenship Programme
As we all know, the UWP constructed a re-engineered citizenship programme when they got into office. The purpose was to sell passports notwithstanding that in opposition the UWP had accused the Dominica Freedom Party of public mischief when passports were sold for the Layou River Hotel Project. The UWP appointed over 48 salesmen around the world to sell our passports. Passports were sold to crooks like the Australian criminal Skase! The Attorney General had said that the UWP sold passports to the persons who were deported from Canada. He also said that the persons paid for the passports, but there was no record in Government to show that money was received or paid into the Consolidated Fund in Dominica. The worthy passport salesman was appointed by the Leader of the UWP Mr. Edison James as Agent/Ambassador in Switzerland.
Visas and Blacklisting
A direct result of that UWP economic policy of passports and offshore licences tou pas touism, Canada imposed visas for Dominicans, and the international community put this country, Waitikubuli, on the black list. For the 10th time this DLP Government had to clean up mess left behind by Mr. James and the UWP. Most of the beneficiaries of the UWP’s policy of banking licences tou pas touism in the offshore sector have been put in liquidation for criminal activities, and their shareholders and Directors have been arrested or in jail for fraud or money laundering. Others are presently awaiting extradition!
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