The Senate Special Select Committee investigating Social Security's investment and securitization programme today presented their report to the Senate. It is the product of 22 months of work, when the four members spent hundreds of hours poring over three thousand pages of documents, and met 67 times to come up with a report that is 125 pages long. That report was finalized at 8:00 pm last night and printing finished at 10:30. This morning at nine-thirty it was presented to the members of the Senate and they were given four and a half hours to read and consider it, and prepare themselves for a debate. When the Senate resumed at 2:00 pm, senator for the PUP Dickie Bradley, who was one of the members of the Select Committee, discussed the recommendations that are listed on page 120 and they are that general manager Narda Garcia, has to go.
Senator Richard "Dickie" Bradley,
"The report before you Mr. President contains also what I think the society we live in is eager to find out. Who will go to jail. Who will be arrested. Who will have to seek the services of attorneys and so forth. The committee is satisfied that there was negligence and recklessness in execution of the duty in approving the purchase, and the sale of the mortgage loans listed below and in the signing of the documents covering mortgages for Data Pro, Aquarius, Intelco, and Western Caribbean Properties and the inclusion of these in the securitization packages without ensuring or performing the proper checks. These in fact were not done in order to protect the Social Security fund.
As a result of these findings Mr. President, the Committee recommends that
all those persons who were members of the Social Security Board, and that includes those Board members who were on the investment committee and also sat on the Social Security Board at the time, and the Manager, that for their negligent actions they should no longer hold office. They should hold no positions. They should not be members of the Board nor hold positions at the Social Security office. That is a recommendation from this committee. It is a very serious recommendation.
What this recommendation does is it says to the Prime Minister of the country, who at this particular juncture is the Minister responsible for Social Security Board, that this is the considered findings of the Committee that you appointed in September of 2004. Let it not be, 'oh they just said this and....' This is a serious recommendation that all those involved must heed. This is a very serious matter.
It continues on page 121, 'that the Senate Committee is of the view that information contained in the report with respect to the documents covering Data Pro, Aquarius, Western Caribbean, International Telecom, and the two other mortgages which were signed, contained representations and warranties and other statements that is or may be misleading, false or deceptive, that these things could amount to offences under the criminal code of this country."
Senator Godwin Hulse,
"'You know what man, we put highly paid, high quality people there. This is the second time Social Security is under mess man. We put you there to mine the fund man, we entrusted it to you. How can you do this to us.' And therefore they felt that somebody had to be held responsible and when we were told from time to time in this committee, 'not your call,' we went back to term number five and term number seven that required that we report to this Senate the names of persons responsible and perhaps for posterity a future commission may not be given such mandate which they would find depressing or difficult to concur with.
But we have attempted to balance both and therefore, as my colleague the Honorable Senator Bradley said on page 120, we have said so that the people responsible should not have anything to do with the fund in the future. And the reason we made the recommendation Mr. President, that in fact the manager should not be at Social Security, which is a tough call, but because in all the documentation it said the responsible officer has actual knowledge and the responsible officer was defined as the manager of the board. And when you signed it, it says, the certificate said, 'certified that a responsible officer who has actual knowledge of the facts and the events.' You cannot get away from that. You cannot get away from that."
