Where did NIB loan go?

It seems to us that the National Insurance Board (NIB) has to do more than simply state that Laventille East/Morvant MP, Fitzgerald Hinds, is not indebted to it, as the $270,000 loan it had approved for him in 1984 was never disbursed by the firm of lawyers to whom the money had been forwarded. Where is that money? The name of Mr Hinds was seriously injured when UNC Chairman, Senator Wade Mark, incorrectly stated in Parliament last week that Hinds was indebted to NIB and that the NIB had written off the loan.

Mr Hinds responded in Parliament that he never received a loan so what became of the money on the NIB books? NIB declared that an unnamed firm of lawyers had received the money to register the conveyance and the mortgage relative to the loan, for which Hinds and another person in October 1983 had applied to NIB to purchase a property in Maracas St Joseph. What follow up action, if any, did NIB take with respect to the money disbursed to the lawyers?

What further action does it plan on taking? Has the National Insurance Board launched a parallel investigation into why the money it had remitted to its mortgage agent on April 2, 1984, and which the agent, minus his fees, reportedly sent on May 11, 1984 by way of a cheque to the lawyers was not forwarded to Hinds? Did the legal firm ever send the standard formal advice to the mortgage agent that the cheque for $268,403.28 had been received? And was any such advice in turn forwarded by the agent to the Board? Who are these lawyers anyway? Will they tell us whether they received the NIB money?

Did the Board ever seek to find out from the firm of lawyers why it did not facilitate completion of the mortgage contract? Is it prepared to state, unequivocally, whether or not the legal firm returned the cheque to its (the Board’s) mortgage agent? If so, when was this done and why was no clear indication made of it in the statement which the NIB made on Tuesday after Mr Hinds called on them to clear his name? If the cheque was not returned, what action has the National Insurance Board taken to ensure its return? Additionally, if the cheque was not handed back, was it lost, destroyed or stolen?

Putting aside for the moment, Mr Hinds, the public is entitled to know the answers to the questions we have posed. The money represents contributions across the board of several hundred thousand persons, many of them ordinary citizens, who are required to pay them as a hedge against retirement and old age. The contributions are a guarantee that they can expect to receive a monthly pension from the National Insurance Board following their retirement. The name of Hinds, a lawyer, has been unfairly tarnished, however briefly, by Mark’s charge in the Senate that he was indebted to the National Insurance Board. The Board, however, having investigated and found that Hinds was wrongly accused of indebtedness to it, cannot end the matter there.

Meanwhile, we do not believe that Senator Mark was wrong to have brought to the attention of Parliament an issue which in all probability he must have believed at the time to have been true. Nonetheless Mark should do some investigating on his own. Was wrong information knowingly fed to him in an effort to have the issue aired in Parliament and provoke a response from the NIB? However, in as much as it was Senator Mark who raised the matter in the Upper House, he has a moral responsibility to pursue it further, and to ask where did the money go? The issue cannot be left like that without clear answers.