Dear Mr. Editor, The Telem Group of Companies announced today that it will transform its total operation into a state-of-the-art “Integrated Digital Service Provider” for St. Maarten. Information about the transformation was revealed to the Council of Ministers in a special convened meeting at the Government Administration Building on Tuesday September 26, 2023, according to news circulating on social media. Mr. Editor, this is good news, but how credible is this news when certain critical points is taken into account. Has the Fiber to the Home project been completed? If not where are the bottle necks? Can the present state…
Author: The Publisher
MARIGOT — Mario di Palma, owner of the defunct District 721 project in Simpson Bay and the bankrupted French-side construction company Deldevert is facing 1-year prison sentence, a €75,000 ($79,500) fine for diverting a reported €1.6 million ($1,696,000) in assets from Deldevert and an arrest warrant. The court in Marigot rules on the case on November 23. A second suspect in the Deldevert debacle, identified by the French-side newspaper Le Pélican as A.K. is facing 6 months in prison with two years of probation, a fine of €75,000 and a commitment to compensate victims. The attorneys for both defendants asked…
PHILIPSBURG — “It is important to get an idea of what the government’s actions and policies have been and currently are with regard to tax holidays and other fiscal incentives,” independent MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten wrote in a press release about her letter dated September 15 to Minister of Finance Ardwell Irion. She wrote that correctly applied fiscal incentives can benefit the country and that incorrectly applied incentives do more harm than good. Heyliger-Marten asked the minister five questions about this issue. She wants to know how many requests the government received since February 2020 for tax holidays or other fiscal…
PHILIPSBURG — The Enterprise Support Project (ESP) will remain in place until June 2028, the National Recovery Project Bureau (NRPB) announced in a press release. Micro, small and medium enterprises can get grants and low-interest loans for 75 percent of their investment, up from 65 percent. The extended program also offers qualifying entrepreneurs a longer repayment period. Since the launch of the program in 2020, ESP has supported more than 200 local businesses and provided training to more than one hundred participants. The extension of the program went into effect on September 15, together with a revised design. The restructured…
Dear Editor, When discussing good governance, many typically think of government and governmental organizations. Several scientific definitions could be cited, but in daily life, it boils down to a few principles. Good governance encompasses transparency, accountability, responsibility, and the rule of law. For government and its subsidiaries, this means that their decisions should be transparent, procedures must be understandable and open to at least the involved parties. Accountability implies that people must be held responsible for their behavior and actions, carrying the consequences of such actions. Responsibility, on the other hand, pertains to the fact that besides accountability, people must…
WILLEMSTAD — The management of ENNIA has mismanaged the insurance company and might even have committed criminal acts, econometrists Servaas Houben and Ronald Ketellapper state in an analysis published by Dick Drayer on LinkedIn. Houben works in the insurance industry in Belgium and Ketellapper is a former manager of Guardian Group Fatum in Curacao, where he was responsible for life, pension and healthcare insurances. Both men reproach the internal supervisor, the board of supervisory directors and the management of the companies of wrongdoing. “Managers and internal supervisors must be honest and have sufficient expertise,” they say. “The same is true…
Dear Editor, Firstly, it’s important to note that the underlying management, supervision, and governance issues are not unique to ENNIA. Curaçao is in dire need of a public financial injection for the Curacao Medical Center. On Sint Maarten, concerns arise regarding NV GEBE, the management of the Old Pension Fund by SZV, SZV itself, and the nearly stagnant hospital project. While many of us may consider it normal to be repeatedly bailed out by the Netherlands, it’s essential to realize that this assistance comes at a cost. The people in the Netherlands also work hard and diligently for their money.…
WILLEMSTAD — Almost twenty years after he became Minister of State for the Netherlands Antilles, Jaime Saleh is under threat to lose this honorary title. Prime-Minister Gilmar Pisas gave the 82-year old former Attorney-General and Governor until September 30 to give it up voluntarily. Otherwise the government will “take the necessary steps to prevent societal escalation around the problems with Ennia.” The interim ruling of the Common Court of Justice of September 12 shows that Saleh, as supervisory director of the beleaguered Ennia Group received almost 3 million guilders for this function between 2008 and 2018. A day later MP…
PHILIPSBURG — St. Maarten performed better than expected in the first half year of 2023, financial supervisor CFT writes in a reaction to the country’s second execution report it received on August 30. This is to say that St. Maarten outdid the projections in its 2023 budget. According to the Cft, St. Maarten ended the first half year with a surplus of 41 million guilders ($22.9 million). “This is the result of higher revenue and lower expenditures,” the Cft wrote. The surplus is 34 million ($19 million) higher than budgeted; revenue is 24 million ($13.4 million) above budget. Expenditures are…
PHILIPSBURG — Telecom operator TelEm has lost its appeal against a decision that orders the company to pay MER St. Maarten BV, a subsidiary of the Israeli MER Group $561.905 and – after the presentation of invoices another $2.67 million. So far, MER has not produced invoices and TelEm therefore refuses to pay. The appeals court for civil affairs handled the dispute between the two companies on May 16 and concluded that there is no reason to suspend the execution of the decision to pay. The relationship between MER and TelEm goes back to June 30, 2017, when parties signed…
