Supervision
By Hilbert Haar There is no doubt that financial supervision is useful. St. Maarten agreed to this supervision when it obtained country status in 2010. The question is now: did financial supervision improve our country’s financial situation? Given the quandary St. Maarten finds itself in after Hurricane Irma it is tempting to answer this question More...
Life support
By Hilbert Haar Insel Air is one step away from bankruptcy. That much is clear from the recent ruling by the Court in First Instance that withheld its approval from the homologation accord with the airline’s creditors. In More...
A sad conclusion
By Hilbert Haar Had the government been a private company it would have gone out of business a long time ago and most ministers would have been locked up for the way they squandered the money they are supposed to More...
Will Ennia’s policyholders pay the price?
By Hilbert Haar Insurance company Ennia is struggling, to put it mildly. Its management and members of the supervisory board, including major shareholder Hushang Ansary, have been fired and the company is now controlled More...
Return on investment
By Hilbert Haar The press conference at the end of the Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation (Ipko) produced one interesting question from a journalist in Curacao. What is the importance of the Ipko? I More...
Garbage fraud
By Hilbert Haar It is no news that French-side garbage ends up on the dump on Soualiga Boulevard. What is however news is that the department of infrastructure apparently has no idea how to prevent this from happening. On More...
This does not add up
By Hilbert Haar Oh, oh, St. Maarten managed to generate some bad publicity again and the attempts by Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin to explain herself do not come across as utterly convincing. The story is this More...
Questionable behavior
By Hilbert Haar The General Audit Chamber-report about Dutch assistance to St. Maarten in the wake of Hurricane Irma reveals that one of the island’s key state-owned enterprises – utilities company GEBE More...
United against corruption
By Hilbert Haar “On the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day we are united against corruption.” That’s a line from a recent statement by Justice Minister Cornelius de Weever. Here is More...
A car for every working (wo)man
By Hilbert Haar Traffic jams. Everybody hates them but nobody wants to leave his or her car at home. A car for every working man; that was something Joop den Uyl, the iconic front man of the Dutch socialist party More...
