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 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...
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...
I from Earth
By Hilbert Haar Every now and then when there is apparently nothing better to do, this question comes up. Who is a St. Maartener? Drs. Rodolphe Samuel, a member of the National Alliance, has once more lit the fire 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...
Useful lesson
By Hilbert Haar Boom! Gerrit Schotte to jail for three years, banned from politics for five years. It is not unexpected, but the Supreme Court ruling has sealed it. The implications of this ruling also spread to More...
How politics failed in the BTP-case
By Hilbert Haar When I read that the anti-corruption taskforce (TBO) has started an investigation into the shenanigans at the Bureau Telecommunication and Post (BTP) I was not in the least surprised. Finally, I More...
