Says internal documents being leaked, reports not submitted on time.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Finance Richard Gibson Sr. confirmed on Wednesday that the Council of Ministers did send a letter to the Supervisory Board of Directors of GEBE asking them to resign since the COM no longer has confidence in the board. Minister Gibson said that a letter was sent to the members of the board asking them to resign willingly, he further stated that if the members of the board refused to resign then the COM will itemize their reasons for asking the Supervisory Board to resign and then they will also approach the Corporate Governance Council for their advice in dismissing the board.
Asked by SMN News what are some of the reasons for the COM to lose confidence in the board members? Minister Gibson said that there are a number of things, one being internal documents from the company are being leaked to the media, reports’ are not submitted in a timely manner based on the charter.
While the Council of Ministers wants the Supervisory board of GEBE to tender their resignation mainly because the report they wrote on the company’s temporary manager was published on SMN News, the same members of the Supervisory board took severe actions against the management board members when they found out that the company’s money was misused. One being the unjustified amount of monies paid to St. Maarten Service Provider, the tickets and misuse of the company’s credit card by members of the former members of the management board. The same board members drop the hatchet on the former COO who purchased a vehicle without the permission of the board and shareholder, the CFO who is now contesting his dismissal in court spent $15,000.00 above the allotted amount to purchase the vehicle, he purchased airline tickets with GEBE’s credit cards for his personal use, while he paid thousands of dollars to an America company to implement the SAP payroll program which was not budgeted for in 2015.
SMN News further understands that the Council of Ministers is extremely angry because part of report written by the internal auditor ended up on SMN News and the former CFO suspended the internal auditor shortly after blaming her for leaking the report. That report shows that the former CFO used bonds at Chippies Café and Kings Mart to support his eating, drinking and smoking habits. SMN News further learnt that the Council of Ministers asked GEBE to give the shareholder some NAF20M from the water reserves funds plus a Naf11M loan to patch the 2016 budget. Even the temporary manager William Brooks told the Council of Ministers prior to his resignation that he will not sign off to give government any monies or loan.
The same board members also took actions against the employees that allegedly stole copper from the power plant in Cape Bay.