Remember the report of the Senate Special Select Committee? Well, you may recall one of the more memorable names that surfaced in that report: Hibernia Bank in New Orleans. In the year 2000, that bank received $24 million in Social Security backed securitization proceeds for two Glenn Godfrey companies: St. James and MH Financial. At the time the leader of the opposition Dean Barrow declared that the Financial Intelligence Unit was empowered to ask U.S. regulators where that money went. And on August 25 of 2006, in the House of Representatives, Barrow asked then Prime Minister Said Musa if he had given the Social Security report to the FIU. Here’s how that exchange went.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“Will the Prime Minister say whether he has considered (and if not, why not) asking the Financial Intelligence Unit to make inquiries of counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere in an effort to trace loan monies that the Senate Special Select Committee has identified as having been (possibly) fraudulently obtained?”
Hon. Said Musa,
“Madam Speaker, a copy of the Report of the Senate Special Select Committee has been provided to the Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit with the view to tracing the loan monies that the Committee alleged as having been wrongfully obtained. The Director of the FIU will no doubt pursue the matter.”
That was 19 months ago and today Director of the FIU Geraldine Davis-Young told new Prime Minister Dean Barrow that the Musa administration never gave her the report and ask the FIU to take any action on any matter in the Senate report. So, no action has been taken and now PM Barrow is handing over the report and asking Davis-Young to investigate. He has also tasked her to investigate the Moises Cal case. One thing Davis-Young told Barrow she has been investigating is the theft of $6 million BTL. But though it happened over two years ago, that one we gather is still ongoing.
