St Maarten Government News

Curacao Government Wants Holland To Mind Their Business Concerning Their Involvement With Failed Drug Mule Airline Insel: The loss of Insel Air in 2019 and the involvement of the Curacao government with the airline in the months leading up to the bankruptcy should, if it is up to the Rhuggenaath government, to be covered up. “,”The loss of Insel Air in 2019 and the involvement of the Curacao government with the airline in the months leading up to the bankruptcy must, if it is up to the Rhuggenaath government, to cover up stay. This can be concluded from the attempts that journalist Yves Cooper is making to uncover important documents via the National Ordinance on Open Government (LOB). Documents that remain in the drawer because the responsible Minister of Traffic and Transport, Zita Jesus-Leito, does not want a peek behind the scenes and claims secrecy on curious grounds. Cooper has requested a multitude of documents with an appeal to the LOB. Apart from access to the economic license, which is already public and the decision of the Minister to withdraw that license, all other 22 requests for publication have been rejected. According to journalist Cooper, the government is making every effort to avoid disclosing the information. This raises the question whether the Rhuggenaath government is right to withhold documents or claims that they do not exist. Personal policy views With reference to article 12 of the LOB, she does not want to disclose some of the documents because they contain personal policy views. For example, the advice of the Civil Aviation Authority to the Ministry of Traffic and Transport on the issue and withdrawal or suspension of the economic permit would contain personal views of the minister. And there would also be financial figures of Insel Air attached, which she would not be able to make public. Legal Affairs’ advice to grant Insel Air a $ 33 million loan would also involve personal policy views. Without further motivation, that judgment is incomprehensible. After all, it is not about advice on the policy of its ministry. Personal policy views can therefore not form part of that advice. If the reasoning of the minister is followed, there will never be an opinion of an official of her ministry again. While the law says that it must concern policy views that can be traced back to persons, and that is not an issue here. Trade secrets With an appeal to Article 11, the Minister does not want to give access to documents because they contain company information that has been communicated to the government in confidence. It would be business-sensitive information that cannot be made public without any problem. Considering the nature of the information requested by Cooper, it does not appear to be information that is sensitive or otherwise would cause problems for the company if shared. Incidentally, there is no evidence that information has been shared with the government ‘in confidence’. The accusation in the public debate is precisely that no information was deliberately shared with the government and the government was tricked into putting 33 million euros in a black hole. The issue becomes all the more incomprehensible when it is taken into account that this is a company that has now been discontinued and has gone bankrupt. What kind of sensitive information can it still have? Is the ministry worried that industrial espionage will take place on data from a company that has now gone bankrupt? How could the information harm Insel Air if it were made public? That is now permanently impossible. Cooper rather thinks that the requested information may reveal the wrong actions of those involved and that that is why the public should not know. Information does not exist The Rhuggenaath government makes a lot of sense with its remarks that the requested conclusions or findings are not available, because they do not exist, or because the information has never been made available. Unthinkable, says Cooper. For example, research has been carried out as required by law, but according to the minister there are no conclusions or findings. The flight schedules of Insel Air are also not known to the minister, while she must have them in accordance with the law. Insel-Air’s license also implies time making those same flight schedules. The investigation report of the ILT regulator would not exist, according to the minister. Remarkable, because in the media she has actually referred to the existence of that report. CCAA’s response to this is also non-existent. CCAA would not have given advice on the granting of a loan to Insel-Air, nor would CCAA have been asked for advice on the flight projection of Insel-Air’s aircraft. Very remarkable, because this is exactly what it is
t concerns the civil aviation authority. Cooper wonders whether the minister is confirming that no one in her ministry has done his or her job and that everything that should have happened in the context of Insel-Air’s existence as an airline has simply not been done? LOB The Open Government Act, the LOB was once conceived to support the transparency of the government. The always promised transparency during election time – also in next Friday’s elections – desperately needs that support, as administrators seem to keep their cards on the chest time and again. & Nbsp; Caribbean Network & nbsp; already reported this in 2015. The LOB does not only presuppose open government in its actions. in principle it also means that the government itself must observe this openness. The Rhuggenaath government’s handling of the law in this matter could be read as a misinterpretation of the law, but Cooper believes the minister is knowingly using the articles of law for a purpose other than that for which they were written. In other words, the minister is guilty of & nbsp; d \ u00e9tournement de pouvoir, or at least of a violation of the principle of legality. It uses the power to withhold documents for a different purpose, or at least it withholds the documents without legal basis. Exactly what the LOB aims to prevent is now, according to Cooper, carried out in practice by the minister, with an appeal to the LOB. Insel Air in better times 33 million The question that remains is, which actions of administrators and civil servants could give so much necessity for secrecy? Insel Air was in financial trouble. The government stepped in with a loan of 33 million guilders. It thus obtained a majority position through pledge and usufruct in the airline. Insel-Air became a de facto government entity. It later emerged that the aircraft hired under a lease contract belonged to a company belonging to the same shareholders as the shareholders of Insel-Air. Reason to question the correctness of investing 33 million guilders in Insel-Air. Did the ministers, especially those at the Ministry of Economic Development, know that at the time or should they not have known that they had bought a cat in a poke? All of the foregoing appears from media reports, but there is no substantiation for it by means of verifiable documents. Litigation Yves Cooper has asked attorney mr. Achim Henriquez to consult with the government through the courts. He wants the minister’s decision not to grant access to the 22 documents otherwise, to be annulled by the judge and that the documents be provided to him after all. And if the government wants to shrug its shoulders about a court decision, it must be changed with a penalty of 10,000 guilders per day up to a maximum of one million. Overview of requested documents based on the LOB
https://koninkrijk.nu/2021/03/10/overheid-curacao-wil-geen-pottenkijkers-na-faillissement-insel-air/