SMN News has been reliably informed that Miriam Herault and Annette Philips dispatched the letter on Thursday requesting the accounts of the conference. The source said the two board members of the Tourist Office were not provided with any information regarding the planning of the CTO conference.
In an invited comment, Annette Philips confirmed that she dispatched a letter to Zin Ka Ieu asking that she provide all invoices and the cost of hosting the CTO conference here. Philips said the board members were told once that the funds to host the conference would have come from Interreg but besides that information nothing else was told to them. She said if the planning and financing was transparent the Tourist Office President would not have a problem providing them with the information they requested.
Philips also explained that there are rumors that the Office du Tourism paid Euros 15,000.00 to use the Senator's house for the closing ceremony while they paid Euros 25,000.00 for the fireworks display. "I hope this is only a rumor and that the Senator did not get paid for the use of his house," Philips said.
SMN News learnt that the four day CTO conference cost St. Martin Euros 250,000.00 of which Euros 50,000.00 was paid by the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
Efforts made to reach Zin Ka Ieu and Senator Louis Constant Fleming on Sunday evening proved futile up to press time.