PHILIPSBURG--The St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF), through its attorney Jairo Bloem, has announced that the service agreement with Henry Lynch has been dissolved on the basis of a host of instances of financial mismanagement.

 

His service agreement ended February 4, following his suspension dated December 12, 2014.

 

"In the time period between the suspension with pay and the decision to terminate the service agreement with immediate effect, SMHDF commissioned further investigations into the previously-established financial irregularities within its organisation," the press release read.

 

"The results of those further investigations performed by ... the newly appointed interim management team coupled with unsatisfactory, incomplete and untruthful answers given by Mr. Lynch during the first time that an opportunity was given to him by SMHDF to give reason and account, and his subsequent refusal after that first meeting to attend further meetings to explain matters, necessitated the immediate termination of his service agreement."

 

Some 10 grounds on which the termination was premised were listed "amongst others" in the press release, including the structural employment of SMHDF employees for work in his companies' personal projects, consequently partially financing the construction of these projects at the expense of SMHDF – "read: the general St. Maarten public and more in particular its less affluent citizens."

 

The structural personal use of the SMHDF credit card, to the tune of more than NAf. 100,000 over the years, with expenditures either not being accounted for, or not properly and truthfully so.

 

Purchasing of building material on SMHDF's account or expense while providing the foundation with only some of the goods purchased and as such, "retaining or causing the remaining purchased goods to be retained by third parties or by himself."

 

"Violation of the entertainment allowance, more than NAf. 35,000 for the year 2014 and making expenditures that completely do not fit the goal and scope" of SMHDF business activities. He "untruthfully denied that he had an entertainment allowance and as such limit for such expenditures."

 

Violating his gas allowance by more than NAf. 2,900 for the years 2013 and 2014, while untruthfully maintaining that the gas allowance did not apply to him.

 

Violating his telephone allowance by more than NAf. 16,000 in 2014 while untruthfully maintaining that the extra expenditures had been sanctioned by the Supervisory Board in 2011.

 

Structurally not complying with various reporting obligations pursuant to the management rules and regulations.

 

Structurally not complying with obligations to provide external auditors with information, resulting in the fact that to date there are no financial statements for the book years 2013 and 2014, and in the fact that SMHDF only recently managed to obtain the 2012 draft financial statement.

 

From 2007 to 2011, before Lynch's management tenure, financial statements had always been finalised in time, or were only very shortly delayed, SMHDF said. The structural and far-reaching violation of the obligation to provide information, also to the investigators that performed so-called quick-scans, is clearly part of Lynch's larger scheme to justify personal expenditures at the foundation's expense, according to SMHDF.

 

Deliberately allowing "a certain contractor using three companies that are clearly linked to this contractor, possibly by means of so-called "Strawman-constructions," to participate on various occasions in public tenders as if they were separate companies. The consequence thereof is that of the 19 projects realised in 2013, 13 were granted to in essence one and the same contractor, for in total NAf. 3,614,217.30."

 

"Publishing, while being suspended, various work-related threats on a Facebook page."

 

The commissioned forensic audit investigation is still going on, to determine more specifically the scope of the total financial damages suffered by the SMHDF as a consequence of the referenced financial irregularities.

 

The SMHDF stated in conclusion that it retained "all rights and defences to take further appropriate judicial actions against Mr. Henry Lynch."

The scanned document included a cluster of signatures.

 

The Daily Herald

 

 

The St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation is represented in this case by attorney Jairo Bloem of Bloem Bonapart & Aardenburg in Sint Maarten.