I want to testify before FINSAC enquiry - Crawford

Mark Titus, Business Reporter

Don Crawford, former head of the failed Century National Bank, says it is important that he gets an opportunity to tell his side of what transpired during during the financial sector meltdown of the 1990s, but is requesting that the Government grant him an all-expense paid trip to Jamaica to appear before the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) enquiry.

The commission, which is conducting the enquiry at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, has asked Crawford to testify via a videoconferencing session, but he prefers to appear in person.

"I think it is imperative," he said in a telephone interview from the United States yesterday. "The issues surrounding the meltdown of the '90s was placed at the feet of Century."

He said, "Century (National) was said to be the institution that created the slide, so my situation is very simple - the people of Jamaica need to know the facts." Crawford added that that was his obligation to his shareholders, depositors, the country and his family.

According to him, the facts presented by politicians and lawyers "add up to less than the facts".

He continued: "It is a nightmare, all the intrigues and the stories, it is sickening."

Crawford has been living in the United States since his banking group was taken over by the Government in 1996 and a suit filed that same year against him and his companies, as well as Balmain Brown and Valton Caple Williams, executive officers of the Century financial entities.

Crawford's efforts to have the Supreme Court decision against him reversed has been unsuccessful.

The UK Privy Council, his last chance at appeal, ruled in October 2005, in agreement with then Solicitor General Michael Hylton, QC, that "It was a breach of fiduciary duty for a director of a bank to authorise substantial unsecured loans to companies in which he had an interest, and he should be ordered to repay those loans even though he did not guarantee them personally."

Crawford said he continued to be in fear of his life and does not want to end up like Douglas Chambers, referring to the chairman of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company who was tragically shot and killed on June 26, 2008 outside the Spanish Town Depot.

face foes, tell truth

The former banker said he wants to appear before the two-man commission to "face all the foes and tell the truth".

"I am not asking for support or favour, I just believe that the investors, shareholders, the people who had an opportunity of being served by the finest financial institution that the country has ever seen deserve to know why, after years of successive profit and growth, things could have fallen apart as they did."

Asked why he made a request for travel expense and security to be paid by the Government, Crawford replied: "Simply put, I am not able to pay my own expenses.

"Shakespeare says he who takes my cash takes trash, but he who takes my integrity takes my life," Craword said.

"I have begged them because this is my life. I just want to tell the people of Jamaica the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ... without prejudice, without fear, and that's all I asked."

mark.titus@gleanerjm.com