Northern Coop answers charges of mismanagement
It was to have had more fireworks than Independence eve, but the quarterly meeting of the Northern Fishermen Cooperative, scheduled for Friday in Belize City, has been postponed until mid-October. According to Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Fisheries, Michael Tewes, on Friday September seventeenth, the entire executive of the cooperative sent a letter to his office requesting permission to postpone the meeting so that the group could begin a tour to areas like Punta Gorda, Placencia and Sarteneja to give “their side” of the story. That story is of course how members of the cooperative’s staff managed to secure huge salary advances and how managing committee members obtained even larger loans. For example, documents now in the public domain indicate that the coop’s chairman, Santiago Marin, has an outstanding loan for more than one point two million dollars. Gaston Arajona, another member of the board, owes more than nine hundred thousand dollars while Ovel Leonardo has a balance of more than four hundred and sixty thousand. Meanwhile, the long time executive secretary and manager of Northern, Robert Usher has received salary advances totalling more than four hundred thousand dollars while the accountant, Modesto Samos, has more than five hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars in advances. His assistant, Marjeli Heredia got fifty two thousand dollars up front. More than ten other employees of the cooperative were named in the investigation by Registrar of Cooperatives Zenida Moya, who in a letter to the chairman noted that managing committee members abuse their positions to issue large and unsecured loans to themselves and associates while the coop endures a high bank overdraft facility with interest rate exceeding fifteen percent. Other points raised include high allowances and luxury packages for members of the management committee and senior staff; no credit ceilings or security for loans to members and advances to staff, coupled with ineffective credit policies. Loan delinquency has been compounded by members selling products outside the cooperative in order to avoid loan repayments through deductions; serious debt to financial institutions with long and short term loans totalling more than twelve million dollars; and finally, the reserve funds in the cooperative are said to be paper figures and not realistic.
However, despite all of this, CEO Tewes admits the coop’s management and board did not do anything illegal and therefore there are no disciplinary measures to be instituted in this case. They will, however, have to answer to the membership and the executive is expected to wrap up its explanations to their members by mid October. Tewes says with the conch season about to open, Northern felt it best to go to the districts, as meetings are not usually well attended. Northern Cooperative has more than six hundred fishermen listed as members.
