Leaked GEBE-documents disqualify Daniel for position of CEO

PHILIPSBURG — A rather astonishing 66 pages of internal documents of utilities company GEBE – letter, emails and other documents – have been leaked to the media through SX Leaks from a Gmail address with the same name. While the company may want to focus its efforts on the person or persons who leaked the documents, the real concern should be about the content of these documents. They paint once more a rather ugly picture of the work history of the government’s number one candidate for the position of Chief Executive Officer – Sharine Daniel.

A letter from the recently dismissed interim director Mauricio Dembrook to the Council of Ministers, dated October 15, 2021, details the concerns within the company about Daniel’s suitability and qualifications for the top position. These concerns confirm those supervisory board members Roberta Diaz and Conrad Richardson expressed in a petition to the court in September that aimed to block Daniel’s appointment. The court documents reveal that the shareholder – the government of St. Maarten – had not found any irregularities that would disqualify Daniel for the position.

The supervisor board dismissed Daniel instantly on two occasions: on July 21 and on September 9. The first dismissal was based on her refusal to prove her qualifications by presenting the board with original diplomas; the second dismissal was based on providing false and misleading information during her job application back in 2012.

According to Dembrook’s letter, Daniel claimed in July 2020 that Walden University had conferred her doctoral degree in business administration specializing in accounting. But almost a year later, Walden wrote to GEBE that it was still waiting for “certain documentation” to complete the conferral. Daniel also falsely claimed that her degree had been validated by the education department. The department informed GEBE, also almost a year later, that it had not even received a request to validate Daniel’s diploma.

Dembrook also wrote that Daniel lied about her work history when she applied for the job of head of the audit department in 2012. She grossly overstated the level of her functions at KPMG, Bank of America and Grant Thornton and claimed to be still employed at Grant Thornton when she applied at GEBE, while in reality she had left that company five months earlier.

Grant Thornton informed GEBE that Daniel had held an entry level job and that she had not been, as she claimed, an internal audit professional.

Dembrook also took issue with the referrals Daniel had presented: they were not from former employers but from former colleagues. One of them, Angelica Espiritu, wrote a glowing reference and presented herself as a manager of business advisory services at Grant Thornton, supervising 43 people. But Grant Thornton informed GEBE that it had no record that Espiritu ever worked for the company.

All this lead to Dembrook’s inevitable conclusion: “Ms. Daniel cannot be trusted and it is clear that she lacks any form of integrity. GEBE has lost any and all trust and confidence in Ms. Daniel as head internal auditor, or any other position within GEBE.”

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