No sweatheart deal for me, says Blythe
Published:Sunday | July 24, 2011 | 12:00 AM
McPherse Thompson, Assistant Editor - Business
Dr Karl Blythe, a former vice-president of the People's National Party (PNP), has insisted that he was the only politician not given a sweetheart deal with respect to debts taken over from failed financial institutions by FINSAC Limited.
Moreover, he claimed that his debts were used as a ploy to swing delegate support against him during the 2005 presidential election, to replace then outgoing president and prime minister P.J. Patterson.
"I am the only politician whose full debts, including principal, interest and fees, remain on the books," Blythe said, while testifying at the commission of enquiry into the financial-sector meltdown of the 1990s.
On that basis, he said, the debts of all members of parliament, transferred to FINSAC and later sold to the Jamaican Redevelopment Foundation (JRF), should be open for scrutiny by commission chairman Worrick Bogle and commissioner Charles Ross, to ascertain who were granted sweetheart deals as it relates to their loans, as well as the extent of the write-offs.
Blythe was responding to questions under cross-examination Thursday by Dave Garcia, the attorney representing former managing director of FINSAC, Patrick Hylton.
Having testified a week before that the bulk of the debtors were not treated fairly and equitably, Blythe said he arrived at that conclusion not only because of his own experience, but based on information gathered about other debtors within the PNP Cabinet of which he was a member.
"In my position as a member of the Cabinet, a vice-president of the People's National Party, and a debtor, it can be said that I had a front-row seat in both arenas," he said.
In holding discussions with Cabinet colleagues, he said, "I would have been privy to certain information with respect to their debts" and, he alleged, the favourable treatment they received from FINSAC and the JRF.
However, Blythe said he would not want to disclose such information without their express permission.
He said that in discussions with Cabinet members and others outside the executive, "they advised me that their matters were treated fairly".
However, Blythe said that when he enquired of Dennis Joslin, head of the JRF, as to why he was being treated differently, Joslin advised that: "The value of your assets being held as security is much higher than the debt, and I cannot convince my principals to write off any part of your debt, even the interest."
Joslin, according to Blythe, further said: "I have been instructed that when it comes to any adjustments in your debts, the Ministry of Finance as well as FINSAC would have to agree."
Blythe, in what he described as his submission to the enquiry, had gone on to say that on September 10, 2005, while sitting on the platform of the PNP's annual conference at the National Arena in Kingston, someone called him to say that he would be getting a demand letter from the JRF in the near future.
"I complained to Prime Minister (P.J.) Patterson bitterly, stating that my debt and that of the (Blythe) family was being treated differently, which elicited an immediate meeting right there on the platform with the prime minister, Peter Phillips, Portia Simpson, Omar Davies and myself," recalled the former water and housing minister. Dr Phillips, Simpson Miller, Dr Davies and Blythe were all vice-presidents of the party at the time.
There on the stage, "the prime minister expressed concern and stated that he would be very unhappy if I was being singled out for different treatment," said Blythe. Patterson asked the then minister of finance, Dr Davies, "to look into the matter".
Blythe is to be further cross-examined at a later date by, among others, Brian Moodie, attorney for FINSAC, and Janet Minott-Phillips, attorney representing JRF.