Chairman offers details of financial shenanigans
As noted earlier, the Senate Special Select Committee has recommended that the persons who handled the securitization process for the Social Security Board should be relieved of their jobs. In another part of his address this afternoon, Chairman Godwin Hulse, detailed the actions that he and his fellow senators say forced them to make those recommendations.
Senator Godwin Hulse
?Where we in the committee and definitely myself have viewed that representations and warranties imbedded in the documents which as far as we were concerned were not accurate, misleading, false or otherwise contributed to the success of the transactions. And that those representations and warranties were imbedded in those documents with the view of allowing the transactions to succeed. But it is not I hasten to say for us to adjudge any person to say that they deliberately wrote them in, we have been told that those were part of the requirements of the process. But again I hasten to say that those requirements though part of the process were intended to ensure the process was accurate, impeccable, right, true and just and not to be complied with to reach the end. In other words, I do not believe that the end justifies the means. But the call is for the judicial law of government to determine. Mr. President there were many instances when we could find in the documentation absolutely no record of the transaction. Both in the case of the audited financials from St. James and in the Social Security financials, and yes there was a mortgage. And yes Senator Bradley says be careful Senator Hulse there is a legal document here, but it is not backed up by any transaction. It is not backed up by any record of a transaction, there may be but we found none. Mr. President I move to three issues, I do not intend to read this report because it will be trashed at all levels by the informed, the knowledgeable, the uninformed, the speculative and the ignorant.?
?The amount that we guaranteed to pay on the international market was twenty-eight million dollars and that is what they are looking for in the North American. Not less. What collateral are we holding? Cayes that the Ministry of Natural Resources says is valued three hundred to three hundred thousand and fifty thousand Belize dollars. And what other collateral are we holding? We have two pieces of land in Cayo that we could not, even up to very late yesterday evening get the evaluation from the Ministry of Natural Resources, even though we had the inspection for a year and a half. But we recall, and it is pointed out in the document that that piece of land was purchased five days before it was mortgaged and it was purchased for fifty thousand Belize dollars. And so I am hard pressed to get, three hundred and fifty thousand plus fifty thousand, that?s four hundred thousand to cover an outstanding twenty million. There may be other assets to sell around the place, when we put everything together. And yes maybe it could be covered. That is why we were very guarded in our report in saying it may not necessarily come from tax payers money. But that is only if there is a generous benefactor out there, because even if it comes from some kind of government grant, which is not tax payers money it has shorted the Belizean people money they could have used for other development.?
?Why would Social Security and the D.F.C. accept insurance certificates from an in-house company to cover some nineteen million dollars? It makes absolutely no sense. Me, Godwin Hulse is buying from the D.F.C., you need insurance, so me Godwin Hulse will give you my own insurance to cover my debt to you, so in the event my project loses, I can pay you what you had and that does not make any sense to me, and I?m lost. D.F.C. of all people and the Social Security the expertise residing in them to accept some in-house insurance from a company they never heard about that was never anything just blew me away. I don?t accept that that could be by any stretch of the imagination acceptable. So the insurance matter has deeper implications. We put high paid, high quality people there man, and this is the second time Social Security is under mess. We put you there to mind our fund; we entrust it to you. How could you do this to us? And therefore they felt that somebody had to be held responsible.?
?I can have the courage to say to my peers, you have done us wrong. Not by what you have done but by what you have failed to do.?
