PHILIPSBURG – The anti-corruption unit (TBO) arrested member of Parliament and leader of the United St. Maarten party (USp), Frans Richardson, on Tuesday on suspicion of membership of a criminal organization, taking bribes and tax fraud. Richardson’s criminal organization focused on “recruiting votes for himself,” the public prosecutor’s office said in a press statement.
Richardson’s arrest stems from the Emerald-investigation into fraud and corruption at the port of St. Maarten. The main suspects in that investigation are port director Mark Mingo and the director of Checkmate Security, O’Neal A. Chanel Brownbill, a member of the USp-faction in parliament who recently switched allegiance and who will take part in the February 226 elections on the list of the United Democrats appeared in court last week as a suspect in the same investigation.
The TBO searched on Monday at an address in Sucker Garden and on Tuesday at addresses on the French side, including Richardson’s home address. The officers seized data carriers and administration.
The officers also seized a house, but it is unclear from the press statement whether this is part of the investigation against Richardson or part of the Larimar-investigation into bribery of civil servants, politicians and people working in the construction sector. Windward Roads director Janhendrik Boekhaar was arrested on Tuesday as a suspect n this case.
The TBO searched the offices of Windward Roads on January 24 and Boekhaar’s arrest is a result of this action. The officers also searched another business establishment.
The Emerald-investigation began in April 2016, after reports in the media about the contract Checkmate signed with the port authority. In the summer of 2015 the prosecutors office already initiated a civil inquiry into business practices at the port.
When PriceWaterhouseCoopers did its integrity investigation in 2014, it also looked at practices at government-owned companies. In the course of this process, the auditors asked for information about procurement. It found that “one government-owned company” had outsourced a $2 million construction contract “to a family member of one of the company’s supervisory board of directors.” This seems to be a reference to the construction of the Walter Plantz Square. The harbor granted this project for $2 million to Windward Roads.
The report furthermore noted that most of the government-owned companies have procurement rules in place “but many of the procedures had broad exceptions and were often not followed as intended.”
The Harbor Group of Companies “did not provide procurement policies and procedures,” the report states. “Therefore, an analysis of the procurement processes at the Harbor Group of Companies was not performed.”
In September 2014 the Harbor Group of Companies announced the establishment of an integrity-board. One of the members of this board was port director Mark Mingo.
In the summer of 2015 the prosecutor’s office announced a civil inquiry against the Harbor Holding Company, emphasizing that his was not a criminal investigation.
However, the prosecutor’s office based its decision to conduct the civil inquiry on the integrity reports from PricewaterhouseCoopers (Integrity Inquiry into the functioning of the Government of Sint Maarten) the Bob Wit-report (Doing the right things right), and on “signals from the community.”
Those signals from the community were most likely the controversy surrounding the contract the port signed with Checkmate Security.
That contract became a bone of contention in Parliament where MPs attempted in vain to obtain the names of the shareholders in the company. MP Frans Richardson has in the past firmly denied that he is one of the shareholders.
The shareholders registry of companies is not public, so identifying shareholders is impossible unless a company chooses to make the names public. In the case of Checkmate Security this has not happened yet. Companies are under no obligations to make the names of shareholders public.
Photo caption: United St. Maarten party-leader Frans Richardson in the parliament building during Nomination Day on January 5. Photo Hilbert Haar.
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