COLA Demands Clarity in S.S.B. Deal with G.O.B.

Geovanni Brackett

As we told you earlier, the arbitration award is in and no matter how it’s spun, it’s bad news for G.O.B. – about three hundred and fifty million dollars-worth of bad news. That’s surely going to bring some serious scrutiny down on a very recent decision by the S.S.B. to look into buying B.T.L. shares from G.O.B.  COLA has been maintaining the pressure on the S.S.B./G.O.B. tangle and on the economy and ramped up that pressure today. According to President Geovanni Brackett, they want answers from G.O.B. and they want those answers now.

Geovanni Brackett, President, COLA

“We ask why the government is seeking to have Social Security spend fifty-five million dollars in buying shares in B.T.L. and B.E.L. when they claim they are very profitable. As any normal person, if you have something that is profitable then why sell it? What is the rationale? We ask why is it that government would want the Social Security Board to actually purchase fifty-five million dollars-worth of shares in B.E.L. and B.T.L. in a company that they believe and they have professed to be extremely profitable. It doesn’t make sense to us. We have looked at several issues relating to just that alone – just writing a letter from the Ministry of Finance to S.S.B. reminding them that the previous investment yielded such an increase – that to COLA alone is not sufficient for us to buy into this. We’ve looked at it very carefully. Social Security is a statutory board and a governmental creature. Whether you want to look at it in another way, in a grassroots level its government. So it would be government who owns these shares selling to government to access more cash. That’s what it boils down to. We are no fools? Why would you sell your shares if it’s really cash that you’re requesting? We believe that it draws a lot of concerns. First of all it draws the concern to what we have been asking – what is the true state of the economy? Is it that the government is cash-strapped now that the Petrocaribe funds have run out that they’re there to just milk the Social Security funds?”