Honorable Minister, Good evening,

It is with great shock and disappointment that the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) has taken note of the unilateral decision to close a section of Pondfill in front of the booths along that stretch, thereby creating what amounts to a second Carnival Village.

This decision is unfair to the stakeholders inside Carnival Village, as it cuts off direct access to the Village during the peak of the Carnival season. Our booth holders are livid, and the SCDF cannot allow this decision to go unchallenged.

The government’s original policy of allowing only 24 booths was already increased to 41, creating a chaotic, uncontrolled environment that government controllers and KPSM are now unable to manage properly. The booths remain open longer than they should, seating is now being allowed along the roadside, which was not permitted before, and the result is a mass gathering of people on a main road.

This is not a situation created by the SCDF. It was created by the government, and the SCDF and its stakeholders are now suffering the consequences.

Our booth holders inside Carnival Village are subjected almost daily to health, fire, economic, and, most recently, tax inspections. At the same time, they have seen their sales dwindle due to developments outside the Village.

We understand safety, but what is being created now is a new gathering area outside the Village, in public, with no security, no weapon scanning, no controls.

As such, we are requesting an immediate and urgent meeting. We are also requesting that the Minister reverse this decision and that the overall situation involving the booths on Pondfill, which the SCDF has warned about since a similar attempt was made two years ago, be discussed in its proper context with the SCDF, not around us.

We look forward to your swift response.

On behalf of the board of the SCDF,

Edwardo Radjouki
President
St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation
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Illidge Road 60-E
St. Maarten - Dutch Caribbean

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Dear Editor,
Two stories circulating recently in the local media deserve to be read together. The first: Sunresorts Ltd. N.V. is asking the Court of First Instance to declare its ownership in Mullet Bay as extending all the way to the coastline. The second: the Nature Foundation St. Maarten has again sounded the alarm over accelerating development activity around Mullet Bay, Beacon Hill, and Little Bay. Side by side, they raise a question that goes well beyond any single court case — who does this island actually belong to?
The Nature Foundation has been raising these concerns consistently and with evidence for years. When they speak, the right response is to listen seriously, not manage the optics. St. Maarten has finite land, finite coastline, and finite ecological resilience. The pressures accumulate quietly until what you assumed was still there is already gone.
Those pressures extend well beyond the environmental. Our roads are overwhelmed, our utilities remain fragile, and the quality of daily life for residents is being steadily worn down by growth that has routinely outpaced any serious capacity to manage it. Any honest conversation about development has to reckon with all of that, not just with what can be built.
But the question of beach access is the one I feel most urgently. Our beaches are among our most fundamental natural, social, and cultural assets — Mullet Bay especially. Families gather there. Children learn to swim there. People from every background share the same stretch of sand. Once that is gone, no settlement or marketing campaign brings it back.
I do much of my professional work in Jamaica, and one of the most painful things I encounter there is what has happened to the coastline. Less than one percent of Jamaica’s shoreline remains genuinely accessible to the public. It happened incrementally — a resort here, a concession there — each decision defensible in isolation, until the coast that belonged to Jamaicans in every real sense was no longer theirs to reach. I see the consequences every time I am there.
But I also want to be clear about what genuine public access must mean. A beach that is legally open yet practically hostile to residents has not been protected. The jet ski concessions that make the water aggressive and dangerous — and we were recently reminded how deadly that can be, following the fatal accident in Tobago — do not serve the public. The beach bar positioning itself as a faux St. Tropez, oriented entirely toward tourists, does not serve the public. The chair rental operators who hassle residents for simply sitting on their own beach certainly do not serve the public. Legal access that hands the space to a different set of commercial interests is no victory.
Beaches should be held for their natural, social, and cultural value, and that must shape what the government actually defends in court and how it manages the shoreline afterwards. St. Maarten still has a choice here. Mullet Bay is still there. I hope those in positions of responsibility treat it accordingly.

Tadzio Bervoets
Belair
St. Maarten

Internal fraud is often the "silent killer" of businesses in Sint Maarten. While external factors like inflation and high utility costs are visible, internal misappropriation can bleed a company dry before the owner even notices.
In a small, close-knit economy, trust is the foundation of business. However, that same trust often leads to a lack of oversight, creating the perfect environment for internal fraud.
1. The "Trust is Not a Control" Gap
The most common driver of internal fraud in Sint Maarten is the concentration of power. In many family-owned or small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), a single trusted employee often handles multiple roles:
• Opening the mail and receiving checks.
• Recording transactions in the accounting software.
• Reconciling bank statements.
• Signing or authorizing payments.
Without segregation of duties, an employee can easily divert funds and then "fix" the books to hide the theft. Recent cases in 2026, including a significant banking sector scandal in Philipsburg, highlight that even established institutions are vulnerable when individual employees gain unchecked access to customer accounts.
2. Common Fraud Typologies in 2026
While technology has advanced, the methods of internal theft remain remarkably consistent:
• Asset Misappropriation: This is the most prevalent form. It ranges from "skimming" (stealing cash before it is recorded) to "larceny" (stealing cash or inventory already on the books).
• Payroll Fraud: In companies with high turnover or seasonal staff, "ghost employees" can be added to the payroll, or overtime hours can be falsified.
• Vendor Kickbacks: An employee in charge of procurement might approve inflated invoices from a preferred vendor in exchange for a "commission" paid under the table.
• Business Email Compromise (BEC): Fraudsters sometimes with internal help impersonate executives to authorize urgent "wire transfers" to offshore accounts.
3. The Red Flags of an "Internal Fraudster"
Internal fraud is rarely a one-time event; it is usually a series of small thefts that escalate. Business owners should look for behavioral red flags:
• The "No-Vacation" Employee: An employee who refuses to take time off or never calls in sick. This is often because they need to be present to maintain the "cover-up" (e.g., ensuring they are the only ones to see the bank statements).
• Lifestyle Changes: Living significantly beyond one's means (new luxury cars, high-end travel) that doesn't align with their known salary.
• Financial Distress: Employees facing personal debt or family pressure may turn to "temporary borrowing" from the company, which eventually becomes permanent theft.
4. The High Cost of Recovery
For a Sint Maarten business, the damage goes beyond the stolen cash:
• Detection Lag: On average, it takes 12 to 18 months to detect internal fraud. By that time, the money is usually gone.
• Legal Hurdles: The cost of forensic audits and legal fees can often exceed the amount stolen.
• Lack of Insurance: A 2026 IMF assessment noted that many local businesses and even some banks lack comprehensive insurance against financial fraud, leaving the business to absorb 100% of the loss.
5. Prevention Strategies for Local Owners
To protect a business in this environment, owners must move toward a Forensic Culture:
• Mandatory Rotations: Force employees to take at least five consecutive days of vacation annually, during which someone else performs their duties.
• External Verification: Regularly compare supplier invoices against actual physical delivery notes. Never allow the person who orders the goods to be the same person who authorizes the payment.
• Bank Statement Reviews: The business owner should receive the original bank statement (or digital access) directly, ensuring they are the first to see the transactions before they are reconciled by staff.
• Whistleblower Channels: Create a safe, anonymous way for other employees to report suspicious behavior. Most fraud is caught via "tips" rather than audits.

To secure the financial future of any enterprise in Sint Maarten, management must move beyond traditional "trust-based" oversight and adopt a rigorous, evidence-based approach to governance. In an era of rising operational costs and increasingly sophisticated internal threats, survival is no longer just about increasing revenue it is about protecting the integrity of the capital already within the business. By implementing professional risk assessments and forensic controls, business owners can transform their operations into resilient entities capable of withstanding both the economic pressures of the Caribbean market and the hidden dangers of internal misappropriation.
Terence Jandroep, Certified Risk Auditor

Dear Editor,

Over the past few days, I have read the reflections circulating online from St. Martiners, especially young St. Martiners, with a mixture of recognition and concern. Their words carry all of our frustration, but also something much more important: attachment. Their voices are not those of people who have given up on our island, but those of people who still care enough to speak out.

That is precisely why they deserve to be heard with seriousness rather than dismissed as merely negative, emotional, or impatient; there is nothing unreasonable about looking at the state of St. Martin with unease. There is nothing unfair about questioning traffic that consumes hours of people’s lives, or about a utilities system that is more fragile than it should be, development moving faster than the infrastructure required to support it, and a quality of life that is being steadily eroded.

I now also read these voices not only as someone from St. Martin, but also as someone who works across the wider Caribbean and, more poignantly, as a new father. Working regionally has provided me with perspective, but becoming a parent has introduced in me a worry in the pit of my belly, knowing that it is no longer about how we are living today, but about what kind of island will remain for my son’s generation and whether we are tending to this country with the seriousness that this extraordinary place demands.

What many are expressing is grounded in the fact that too many of the issues being discussed have lingered for years without any meaningful resolution. They are asking whether enough attention is being paid in a way that is grounded, honest, and visible; whether stewardship still exists in a meaningful sense. And they have every right to ask.

It is not the responsibility of ordinary citizens, least of all frustrated young people, to arrive with polished policy prescriptions before they are allowed to voice concern. They do not need to solve traffic to say that daily gridlock is eroding quality of life; they do not need to redesign the energy grid in order to point out how dangerous dependency and fragility have become; they do not need to come up with technical answers in order to name the neglect that has unfolded in front of them for decades. Their first right is not to solve. It is to be heard. They are asked to be more patient, more constructive, more measured, more diplomatic. Yet while this is happening, the conditions provoking their concern remain plainly visible. And so frustration begins to settle into normalcy. And this is a most dangerous moment for any society, because once decline starts to feel routine, people will slowly lose faith in the very idea that things can improve.

Working throughout the Caribbean has also made something else clear to me: St. Martin is not the only island facing pressure, but there are places with fewer resources and less visibility that are beginning to confront their limits with greater honesty than we often allow ourselves, and that comparison can be uncomfortable. We have long taken pride in our resilience, our dynamism, and our ability to move quickly. Yet there are times when that confidence drifts into hubris, when we behave as though we are exempt from the consequences of poor planning, from the realities of overextension, or from the natural limits of a Small Island Developing State. We have built, expanded, approved, and promised as though roads, utilities, coastlines, hillsides, neighborhoods, and our very social fabric itself can endlessly absorb more pressure. They cannot.

That is why the question of capacity matters so much. Development is not simply a matter of what can be built; it is also a matter of what can be sustained. A serious country must ask whether it can maintain the competence and continuity needed to manage growth responsibly. It speaks to whether we treat our country as something to steward or merely something to use, or abuse. And often by those with interests way outside of our extraordinary community.

What gives me hope, though, despite all of this, is that these voices are still being raised. Concern is not the opposite of patriotism but one of its clearest expressions. The young people speaking now are not detached from St. Martin but are attached to it, often by their navel strings buried in this soil. Like mine. Like my son’s. And their frustration comes precisely from that attachment. They want better from the place because they still believe it can be better. They want to feel that this country is more than traffic, strain, and neglect. They want to believe that it is still possible to live here with dignity, pride, and some confidence in the future.

As a new father, I am forced to think not only about the island we inherited, but also about the island we are shaping through action or inaction. Through complacency. St. Martin deserves more than a politics of reaction and more than a public culture in which concern is treated as an inconvenience. The people speaking up deserve to know that their country hears them, that their concerns are valid, and that caring enough to speak is still worth something.

If St. Martin is to have a future worthy of its people, one of the first things we must recover is the ability to listen seriously when our own sons and daughters tell us, plainly and without ornament, that something is not right.

Tadzio Bervoets

Belair

St. Martin