St. Maarten Private Eye

The 50.000 dollar question.

Election time is over and the dust has settled down. Many writers on this site are noticeably upset about the vote buying programs that the two largest parties ran. Allegedly that is, because nobody has posted hard evidence or personal experiences. And unless some brave soul stands up to shows us otherwise it will all just remain hot air. Case closed for now. A case that should not be closed yet is the GGV "donation" to commissioner Laveist; The most blatant example in SXM's history how to bribe a government official and get away with it. Refresh the memory? Click here to Read More ____________________________________________________________

GGV, a foreign owned company employing many (if not exclusively) foreigners all in need of work permits, "donated" 50.000 dollars to commissioner Laveist who issues these work permits. Right in front of our eyes. Well…to be precise, it was donated to the New Hope Foundation some alias of Laveist. An article written in the TODAY Newspaper in August 2006 when GGV opened its new sales office, stated that the monies were given to Laveist for community projects which the New Hope Foundation was to undertake. The article quoted a statement from J. Scott Wittle, President and CEO of Grand Gateway Vacations who said that it is with co-operate citizenship and community sponsorship that he has identified with New Hope Foundation, where Laveist is president and founder.

In that same article the commissioner said that the aim of the foundation is to help people who are on drug use, since his foundation was created to help the ills of the St. Maarten community. Laveist also said in that article, in which he posed with members of his board who welcomed the hefty sum, that the monies will be used mostly to eradicate the use of substance and victim abuse. Yes you heard it right: the monies will be used mostly to eradicate the use of substance and victim abuse. Kissy-kissy sweet talk or rather plain bullshit baloney if you ask me.

To eradicate substance abuse or campaign funds?

It is some 9 months later now and we haven't t heard a thing about Laveist's so called efforts to eradicate substance abuse. I am really starting to question this. The public has the right to know who are the real beneficiaries of this massive payout? How exactly has Laveist and his board used the amount to eradicate the use of substance and victim abuse. May we know please? Don't GGV like to know? Until we know how it was spent, payment of any amount to a commissioner (or his foundation) is fraudulent by any standard as far as I am concerned. If this goes unnoticed by the authorities, we can stop pretending that we are a society under the rule of law. I mean let's face it, what is it that you need to do around here to get a bribery investigation sparked. If a 50 thousand dollar payment to a commissioner's foundation, disguised as donation to the good cause, is not enough then what is?

To add insult to injury the original New Hope Foundation is a genuine 30 year old US (NJ) based non-profit organization dedicated to the treatment of adults and adolescents for alcoholism, drug addiction and compulsive gambling. It has an impressive track record. Laveist's New Hope Foundation has no track record as far as I can tell. I wonder why he copied the name because it can't be coincidence.

The 50,000 dollar question is why the justice authorities do not act on this copycat commissioner accepting a substantial irregular payment while in office and not giving any accounting for it. It is really high time that authorities start showing their presence or they run the risk that many of us indeed find that justice on Saint Maarten has degraded to class justice and second class justice at the same time.

SXM PE's blog | 20 comments | read more

Submitted by SXM PE on Mon, 2007-04-30 13:43.