Dear Mr. Editor:
There are two letters which have been circulating over the last several weeks. The first letter dated November 30th 2015 was addressed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (The FCO) and signed by Rev. Dr. Clifton Niles, James “Freddy” Hughes and Marvo Duncan. The second letter was dated December 21st 2015, signed by Mr. Allan Gumbs and Mr. Kennedy Hodge, and addressed to Her Excellency, the Governor of Anguilla, Ms. Christina Scott. Both letters have a section labelled “Political Leadership, Democracy and Good Governance” which contains, except for a few words, almost exactly the same information – the same points and language – relative to Valentine Banks and Fabian Fahie, and therefore one is left to believe that it is one of three things namely a) Great minds think alike………….., b) The same person wrote that section of the letters and c) It’s a major case of plagiarism by “cut and paste”.
One of the objectives of the letters appears to be to derail the IMF, ECCB, World Bank, CDB and GOA designed bank resolution, and regulatory model, which is being driven by Victor Banks. One of the “brilliant” ideas which the signatories of the letters have for achieving the derailment of the process is to use the section “Political Leadership, Democracy and Good Governance” to discredit Val Banks and Fabian Fahie in the eyes of the white people in the FCO. I am not going to discuss their mention of Cora Richardson-Hodge in that section of the letter as she is a politician and Minister of the Government etc. and therefore I view her as a natural target.
Why is the attack levelled at Mr. Fahie and Mr. Val Banks? One can hazard two guesses. On the part of two of the signatories of one of the letters “put it in front of me and I will sign it“. In other words they get notoriety. On the part of the other signatories their intention seems to be “Fahie, Banks and Preston Bryan went on the radio stations and cut the feet from under a bunch of people who were using the effort to resolve the banking issue as either a political footstool for their political elevation or a means of protecting their personal interests”. Fahie, Banks and Bryan correctly and forcefully made it patently clear that the major issue at stake in the banking crisis was the need to protect depositors.
The documents speak of Val Banks’ lack of ability to do anything to foresee or ward off the crisis that overcame NBA, stating as follows: “Mr. Valentine Banks must bear much responsibility for the situation at that bank because of his lack of foresight and failure to be proactive. For the Minister to be utilizing his brother to be a key advisor in resolving the banking issues when that same brother demonstrated a patent inability in foreseeing the problems on the horizon and addressing them effectively when they arose, and ultimately had to be released by the banks’ Board of Directors, is in our view plainly unacceptable.”
Folks let’s examine Val Banks’ credentials and you can make your own determination as to whether he is fit to advise CM Banks. Val Banks was a career Banker who led NBA’s banking operations from 1985 to 2013”. Most Anguillians would have known of him throughout the years due not only to his family ties, his exploits on Anguilla’s sporting fields, his Leeward Islands and West Indies Cricket Board leadership roles but, most importantly, his role as the head of the National Bank of Anguilla.
Mr. Banks was at the helm of NBA through the critical years when its Board (notably including Fahie) and Management positioned, and grew, the Bank to be the monumentally significant organization it became in the development of the island of Anguilla. NBA through those years led the banking industry in all the critical areas i.e. deposit-taking, lending and assets.
Banks is not one to go to the radio stations to boast of the things he achieved or was directly involved in to the benefit of the people of Anguilla and to the region through NBA, the Caribbean Credit Card Corporation Four C’s (the Board of which he chaired for fifteen years up to 2013) or the National Commercial Data Services NCDS (which NBA with his leadership and CCB with Preston Bryan’s leadership jointly formed). Banks chaired NCDS for twelve years up to 2013.
Four C’s strategic choices in driving the provision of international debit cards and credits cards for every qualified customer of the ECCU indigenous banks was done under Banks’ watch. The Board of Four C’s comprised the leadership (CEO’s, GM’s etc.) of the thirteen ECCU banks which owned Four C’s, and for fifteen consecutive years they elected Banks to the leadership of Four C’s a profitable company with assets in excess of EC$110 million and a staff complement of over twenty (20) persons.
NCDS was, and still is, the only banking data center in the region and has spread its wings from providing services not only for its owner banks (NBA and CCB) but also banks and other institution outside of Anguilla. NCDS has been profitable for over ten (10) years, has assets of over EC$10 million, and a staff complement of over ten (10) persons most of whom are highly skilled in different technology areas.
Now let us examine Marcel Fahie’s credentials. The attack on Fahie pointed to his removal from the Board of the TCI National Bank, stating: “Mr. Fahie, as a director of a failed local bank in the Turks & Caicos Islands, was debarred by the then government of Anguilla from involvement in financial services in Anguilla, in accordance with the law. That he too is one of the Minister’s principal advisors in dealing with the banking issues is unacceptable.”
Anyone who is aware of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Fahie’s removal from the NBA Board would know it was a personal attack motivated solely by politics and that the TCI Bank matter was seen as an opportunity to diss Mr. Fahie. Not surprisingly, not a single one of the other ECCU Directors of the TCI Bank who served on the Boards, or were General Managers of Banks in the ECCU region which were shareholders of the TCI Bank, was removed from those Boards or management by their Government or were sanctioned by the ECCB.
As I indicated earlier, Mr. Fahie was a member of the Boards of NBA and NCDS from the inception of those businesses. Even more importantly he is viewed by most persons as being the single person most responsible for the promotion and establishment of NBA despite the chest-beating, self-promoting, history re-writing we constantly hear on Hammer and Radio Anguilla from some persons. Those persons notably, and as I expected, are in the forefront of the brigade pushing shareholder interests over depositor protection. Not so for Mr. Fahie who has as much as or more shareholding interest to lose than most. But that is the nature of the man. Mr. Fahie was also a key player in the establishment of another Anguillian businesses MAICO.
Mr. Fahie was a career public servant while at the same time playing significant roles in the development of the private sector. It is an undisputable fact that he was the most thoughtful, forward-thinking, developmentally oriented aggressive and progressive public servant Anguilla has ever had. Fahie has been deeply involved in developmental areas such as Government Policy and Strategy Initiatives with regard to tourism, education and fiscal stabilization and was a leader in infrastructural development matters involving ANGLEC and the airport.
The Banks growth was fueled by their stated objective and passion for truly meeting the needs of Anguillians in the areas of lending for land, home and business ownership, education of young people, payment solutions such as debit and credit cards and last, but not least, the phenomenal support they gave to the social improvement and advancement of this small community.
The lives of Fahie and Banks suggest that these two gentlemen spent, combined, in excess of sixty years working for the benefit of Anguilla and Anguillians through the public and financial services areas and are, in my view, most eminently qualified to advise and to be consultants to any Chief Minister of Anguilla and to any person who has an interest in the development of Anguilla.
While Banks and Fahie worked almost selflessly for Anguilla’s development (neither of them are wealthy people) some of the folk who are now their biggest critics, and critics of the bank resolution, spent their best years pursuing overly aggressively paths of self-interest – working for soulless monopolies gouging and bleeding Anguillians with criminally over-priced services or trying hard to become multi-millionaires on the savings of ordinary Anguillian depositors.
To my mind some of the main supporters of the letters do not have credentials anywhere as significant as Fahie and Banks but seem to have qualified themselves to advise and instruct the white people in the FCO on how to interpret a most anti-Anguillian, pro-colonial British concoction called “Contingent Liability”. What a damn shame!!!
Sometime ago I heard the Chief Minister speak of an attitude of “resentment” displayed by one of his most vocal, arrogant and boorish critics, and a light came on in my head. It really is about the “crab in the barrel” syndrome which we black people seem to have in our DNA.
“While we trying to mash-up the bank resolution so that Victor don’t get credit, let’s try and mash-up Marcel and Val as well”.
(Name witheld at writer’s request.)
