The Senate Special Select Committee yesterday made it clear 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."
So who are they? Well, tonight we can show you who was on the Board and Investment Committee of the social security board from the years 2000 to 2002 when most of the bogus securitization transactions took place. Most of them were picks of then Minister Ralph Fonseca and most have since moved on, but the three who remain are General Manager and CEO Narda Garcia, former board member and now Chairman Yasin Shoman and Director of Finance Rolando Zetina. Garcia and Zetina are both senior, full-time employees of the Social Security Board.
The question is who, if anyone, will the Prime Minister move against? Presently he's away and has not received the report of the Special Select Committee. When he does receive it, the conventional wisdom is that he will be compelled to act.
But close observers say that the Prime Minister has a habit of defying conventional wisdom and the fact is that throughout the hearings, Narda Garcia never once pointed to the Minister responsible to say that he urged her or the board members to make any of the ill advised or inexplicable investments. Those investments, tens of millions of dollars of them, were simply, as Senator Hulse put it, left as simply inexplicable.
And it's worth noting in all this, that even after the lid was blown on those bad investments, Narda Garcia was, last year, awarded with a 5 year contract, and promoted from general manager to CEO, answerable to the Prime Minister. With all that in mind, it's clear that the Prime Minister has some heavy deliberating to do.
