Philipsburg:--- Minister of Justice Roland Duncan admitted on Friday that a civil servant on Curacao blocked St. Maarten from fully accessing the Border Management System (BMS) since November 24th, 2012 because he (Duncan) refused to participate in a new system Curacao wants to implement. Minister Duncan made the clarifications on Friday after an article was published by a reporter and editor whom he called a "Dutch Stooge". Minister Duncan said the reporter in question is anti-government and he is also doing the dirty work of the Dutch Government which in his opinion is to create panic on the island. While St. Maarten was blocked from accessing the BMS system which is in Curacao, immigration officers operating at the Princess Juliana International Airport are still able to scan the passports of everyone that enters and leaves the island. Head of Immigration Geronimo Juliet and Director of IND Udo Aron accompanied SMN News reporter to the Princess Juliana International Airport and showed us that the scanning of passports is done and the information is now stored locally, it is no longer sent to Curacao as was the case prior to November 24th, 2012. Immigration officers are still able to scan all machine readable passports, they are able to detect if a person is listed on a watch list, and if the travel document the visitor is using is authentic.
As a matter of fact, SMN News reporter had the immigration officers scan her passport since it is often times difficult for certain countries to access information from French Passports for the protection of the person's personal information under human right laws. SMN News reporter also saw a passport that a national of Israel bought online and managed to use at least three times when the BMS system was fully operational. That passport was confiscated in November 2012. According to information from the confiscated passport, the Passport was purchased online and has on its cover "World Government of World Citizens/Passport Mondial" the person used the passport on June 7th, 2010 and April 7th, 2011 and also on November 16th, 2009. It should be noted that in 2009 the BMS system was not yet installed, but in 2010 and 2011 the BMS system was fully operational on St. Maarten and the system did not detect the passport to be fraudulent and bogus. An immigration officer said a traveler was in possession of a temporary resident permit which he obtained with his authentic passport and he is the person who used the bogus passport that was confiscated in November 2012.
Director of IND Udo Aron said St. Maarten and its Kingdom partners had some disagreements on how the system will be managed and country St. Maarten had to pay too much monies to maintain the system in Curacao. Aron explained that the Minister Justice could not agree to such a system because all the information and knowledge stays in Curacao. Aron said with this system it is time consuming for the travelers who have to wait in long lines for processing while St. Maarten wants to have its own database locally. Aaron further noted that St. Maarten is willing to share information with its Kingdom partners but the Minister of Justice refuses to allow Curacao to have access and store information for all its visitors. Aron further explained that St. Maarten is not able to access the system to see how often a person travels. "While we have that information on an image file we do not have it in a printable format." Aron said what is available to St. Maarten now is enough for border protection but third parties such as the police and prosecutor office can be hampered especially if they are interested in someone who might be suspected of a crime.
As for blocking St. Maarten out of the BMS, Minister Duncan said that Curacao wants to implement a new system which would cost almost Naf.10,000,000.00 (ten million guilders) to set up, of which one million would be for salaries. The new system will cost the two countries Naf. 551, 000.00 annually for operational cost. This system that Curacao and the Dutch government want to set up will be installed in Curacao and St. Maarten would have to continue sending all its information to Curacao. Minister Duncan said that is illegal because St. Maarten is not supposed to make travelers information available to third parties, he said St. Maarten does have an agreement with its Kingdom partners to share police information but not store or control information. Furthermore, St. Maarten has an agreement with Anguilla and St. Barthelemy as well as the Franco/Dutch treaty and it is impossible for St. Maarten to send visitors' information to Curacao for storage and not have full access. "Curacao and the BES islands are competitors to St. Maarten's tourism industry and I cannot and will not give them all information pertaining to the amount of visitors we get as long as I am the Minister of Justice on St. Maarten. In the beginning I agreed to use the same software and to continue to exchange information but that was not good enough."
The Minister of Justice said that in 2010 an agreement was signed where St. Maarten would share police information; however, there is a law on privacy therefore it is impossible for him as Minister of Justice to agree to give any and everyone access to people's information. He said prior to 10/10/10 the ICT and the servers are on Curacao and since St. Maarten became a country he wants St. Maarten to have its own ICT system with a server on the island that can serve as a backup to the one in Curacao.
He said when data is sent to Curacao it is managed by Curacao and St. Maarten never had full access to information because the island was only a client. To gather information from the database it can only be done by certain queries (pre-determined) the Minister explained. Minister Duncan said he proposed that St. Maarten which now a country within the Kingdom should have its own database and a server which would serve as a backup to the one in Curacao while he will continue to share information with the Kingdom partners as agreed upon but the Dutch and Curacao declined his proposal. Duncan said there was another agreement made which was to have quarter masters appointed to set up a new system that would cooperate with each other but the quarter masters were never appointed. He said someone by the name of Klass de Jhong is the coordinator for the plan veiligheid (safety plan). Duncan said the ICT system was financed by the plan veiligheid which is the Dutch funding which was in the Netherlands Antilles. He said at the end of 2011 the plan veiligheid ceased and the monies had to be shared up among the islands, namely St. Maarten, Curacao, and the BES islands. Duncan further explained that de Jhong was supposed to do a detail accounting but that too was not properly done. He said while the Netherlands Antilles no longer exists one of the heirs cannot decide to do what they want with the monies. However, in this case Holland did on behalf of the BES and Curacao agreed because what is to be done is again benefiting Curacao. He said he objected because as shareholder he wants to be able to appoint his own people simply because he does not trust de Jhong. Minister Duncan said de Jhong went on his own and set up a new company (NV) who will continue with the management of the ICT system.
Minister Duncan made clear that St. Maarten was deliberately cut off from the system on November 24th, 2012 by a civil servant whom he believes received direct orders from the Netherlands. Duncan said that he is sending the Dutch government a letter to inform them that he will hold them liable for the damages they caused the island. Even though St. Maarten was blocked since November 24th, 2012, the Minister said he did not send that letter out as yet, and he did not file a lawsuit against the Dutch Government as yet. However, he did inform the Council of Ministers and Parliament about the actions taken by Curacao. The Minister of Justice said he did not publicize the information because he believes that the media on St. Maarten is biased and when the news was finally leaked by someone, the newspaper and reporter that wrote the story did not seek thorough information before publishing it.
Minister Duncan said he believes that the civil servant received instructions from someone or some Ministers from the Dutch Kingdom Council of Ministers. Duncan said that the Immigration Department at IND building and the BMS was cut off intentionally one night after he was officially notified that the intention is to cut St. Maarten out of the system. The Minister said cutting St. Maarten out from the BES intentionally is blackmail and manipulation tactics that were used by the Dutch and Curacao to bring St. Maarten to its knees but that did not happen.
Minister Duncan said the Dutch and Curacao envies St. Maarten and that was the reason they chose to cut the St. Maarten out of the system during the peak of the season. "What they thought was that we were going to go down on our knees and beg them or they were going to cripple the tourism economy. What I want people to know is that we have survived because the Dutch thought they would have hurt us with our visitors during season but we have survived again without the Dutch stooge and his nonsense. I will admit that we are struggling and we are now using a profile system and there is no "free for all" as portrayed by the reporter who wrote the story. I want to make clear there is no free for all. There have been checks and balances while we have been setting up our own software (DECOS).
The Minister said that the system that Curacao is using is outdated and it is extremely slow. He said that the prosecutor's office cannot provide him with the statistics on fines, the court of guardianship also cannot provide him with the information that he asked them for simply because the system is outdated. He said his vision for the Justice Ministry will be highly technological.
He admitted that by cutting off St. Maarten from the BMS the island got hurt. He said that Curacao already handed over two tapes with the backlog information which he is busy transferring to the new system St. Maarten will be using. He said in another few weeks everything will be fully functional.
The Minister of Justice said its time for St. Maarten to do business seriously because there is a joint Central Bank between Curacao and St. Maarten that is not functioning and St. Maarten has no control over that.
Minister Duncan said he will be looking for St. Maarten shares from the plan veiligheid because he bought updated software for St. Maarten and is setting up an ICT system for St. Maarten. He made clear that St. Maarten is a shareholder to the BMS system and sabotaging the island without proper notice is illegal while he plans to hold the Dutch government responsible for their actions.
Click here to view photos of Immigration Officers scanning passports on Friday.