PHILIPSBURG — World Travel Awards™ was established in 1993 to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Today, the World Travel Awards™ brand is recognized globally as the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence. World Travel Awards™ gala ceremonies are regarded as milestone events in the industry calendar, attended by the industry’s key decision makers and figure heads, as well as key trade and consumer media. The 2019 Caribbean & North America Gala Ceremony was held on Monday January 28, 2019 at the Sandals Montego bay, Jamaica. With hundreds of contenders vying…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG — “Okay, then you start the emergency regulation.” With those words Hushang Ansary, the 93-year old Persian-American major shareholder of Parman International BV walked out of a meeting with the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten on June 21, 2018. The meeting was about a plan to solve problems at insurance company ENNIA but Ansary refused to support this plan. A day later, Ennia Caribe Investments moved $100 million to Parman Enterprises LLC, an Ansary-controlled entity outside of the Ennia group of companies. All this appears from a ruling by the Court in First Instance in Curacao about…
WILLEMSTAD – Insurance company Ennia will get access to the approximately $124 million held in accounts at Merrill Lynch in New York, United States Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn ruled this week. Hushang Ansary, the major shareholder of Parman International, the company that controlled Ennia until the Central bank of Curacao and St. Maarten issued emergency measures last year, fought in vain against the release of these funds in the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. Judge Glenn ruled this week that “the potential harm to Parman is far outweighed by the harm that would be…
PHILIPSBURG — Amidst the news about the arrests of business associates of Member of Parliament, Theodore E. Heyliger, StMaartenNews.com explored the effect of these arrests on the family. We often lose sight of how these kinds of arrests have an effect on the mental state and morale of the other family members. In an invited conversation with StMaartenNews.com, MP Theo Heyliger chatted with us about the effects and toll these investigations are having on his family and on himself personally. “For me it’s a flash back of what they did to my grandfather.” Heyliger remarked. “Only now it’s worse with…
PHILISPBURG – Joane Dovale-Meit has left her position as Secretary-General of the General Audit Chamber “to explore new career opportunities in good agreement with the board,” a press statement from the Audit Chamber says. Dovale-Meit was the institution’s first Secretary-General. Deputy- Secretary-General Keith de Jong will succeed her. Dovale-Meit’s departure has been long in the making. The process to find a successor began already in the summer of 2017. Hurricane Irma threw a spanner in the works and Dovale-Meit continued to work for the Audit Chamber until Friday, January 31. She coordinated the first audits and she also managed the…
PHILIPSBURG – InterCaribbean has to provide a $500,000 bank guarantee for Insel Air, the Court in first Instance ruled on Thursday. But Insel cannot touch that money until the court has ruled in a regular procedure that the almost bankrupt airline is entitled to it. The ruling of Thursday, January 30, makes clear that without these funds, Insel Air will be unable to pay salaries over the month of January. The dispute between interCaribbean and Insel Air heated up after Insel’s trustee Rogier van den Heuvel put a lien on the fuel in an interCaribbean plane at Princess Juliana Airport…
WILLEMSTAD – Former Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte is no longer a member of the parliament in Curacao and the parliament was within its rights when it stopped paying his salary. Schotte, who is currently serving a 3-year prison sentence, appealed the decision to take away his membership of parliament (and his income) but the court ruled on Thursday that his appeal has no merit. Schotte argued that the national ordinance revocation membership of parliament has not gone into effect and that there is therefore no legal basis to revoke his membership. The court rejected this argument: the change of the…
By Hilbert Haar How similar is St. Maarten to Curacao? That question becomes relevant after Curacao signed an agreement with the Netherlands about economic cooperation, improving its financial management and its government organization. Like Curacao, St. Maarten has a weak financial management system, an even weaker tax inspectorate and a fragile tourism-based economy – a one-trick pony if there ever was one. Curacao asked the Netherlands for help and this has resulted in the agreement Prime Minister Rhuggenaath signed with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte last week. No matter how you look at that agreement, the result is that the…
PHILIPSBURG — Last week Curacao’s Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath signed an agreement with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. It’s rather optimistic title is ‘Samenwerkingsconvenant Groeistrategie Curacao’ (Cooperation agreement growth strategy Curacao). It aims to improve Curacao’s financial management and to boost the stagnating economy. The interpretation of this voluntary agreement has triggered mixed feelings in Willemstad. Dutch broadcaster NOS headlined a story based on a radio interview with its correspondent Dick Drayer with the text ‘Nederland gaat zich nadrukkelijker bemoeien met het bestuur op Curacao” (Dutch intervention with governance in Curacao will become more intense). “That was a little short-sighted,”…
MP Claude “Chacho” Peterson had a rude awakening this weekend when, during a presentation on Friday in Parliament about a design for a new Parliament Building as a part of a futuristic Parliament Plaza and Boulevard development project, his words were taken out of context and used against him and his fellow Parliamentarians by Second Chamber member for the SP, Ronald van Raak, who used the opportunity to pose several questions to State Secretary Raymond Knops of Kingdom Relations. The questions Van Raak posed were: “Do you share my view that the money for the reconstruction of Sint Maarten is…
