G.O.B. Now on the Hook for Money Owed to S.S.B.

Eamon Courtenay

The case was comprehensively lost, but did Sunshine really lose anything? Not according to Justice Abel. He found that the company had been fully relieved by its owner, the government, of liability of debt to the Social Security Board and to the government itself. This was confirmed during the trial in the testimony of Financial Secretary Joseph Waight. From as far back as 2012, government effectively assumed responsibility for Sunshine’s debt and this was cemented into the 2015 Settlement Agreement. Justice Abel, as Courtenay discusses, could find no sign of agreement by Sunshine with all parties, which means there was never a promise to compensate Sunshine.

Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for B.T.L. Employees’ Trust

“We went through all the evidence, and the evidence showed that from way back in 2012, the Government gave its assurance to Social Security Board that the money was owed by Sunshine to Social Security Board, the Government would pay. Up until 2016, after the Settlement Agreement, Social Security wrote to the Government and said, pay me as you promise to pay me; the Government has not made good on that. In the Settlement Agreement, clause five point four, it is made very clear that that liability remains with Sunshine, which is Government-owned. It is simple as far as the Trust is concerned: an honorable agreement was made on the eleventh of September, 2015, between the Trust, Dunkeld and the Government; monies were paid, it was honored, and the Government should stop these spurious attempts to try to undo that which it agreed to do. There must, at the end of the day, be an end to litigation and an end to this endless spending of public money.”