The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

THE Free National Movement yesterday doubled down on calls for government transparency in the aftermath of the FTX collapse, with its chairman Dr Duane Sands insisting the Davis administration must be seen to want to urgently get to the bottom of the situation.

Dr Sands said that while the government was not responsible for the implosion of FTX, there remained many lingering questions and assertions that needed clarification.

His comments came after FNM leader Michael Pintard on Friday said the Davis administration had an obligation to clearly indicate if it had any intimate relationship with companies that are in the country that can give the impression that entities were able to operate with impunity because of the nature of that relationship.

 He also said the party had concerns about government transparency of the due diligence it conducted of FTX.

 Mr Pintard at the time led a group of FNM supporters to the Office of the Prime Minister where he addressed the issue.

 “We still don’t know what happened, when it happened, how it happened,” Dr Sands said when he was contacted yesterday. “There are bits and pieces of the story coming and every five, ten minutes you get another piece of the story.

 “What seems to be clear right now is that there was some (alleged) illegal activity, some unethical activity arising at FTX and Alameda that was not being reported to the rest of the company and certainly not to the regulators and this happened and resulted in a rapid turn around of the fortunes of this company and we are just now learning all of the details and I suspect that this is going to wind up with incredible amount of litigation.

 “We have called for the government to be as forthcoming as possible given the risk to the jurisdictional reputation,” Dr Sands also said. “We believe that this should be managed in a way that is transparent; that the government is seen to be forthcoming. That whatever information that is available is made public and we are seen to be wanting to get to the absolute bottom of this, that there are no sacred cows.”

 He also rebuffed some accusations that the FNM was at fault for the ongoing situation because it passed legislation in 2020 - the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges (DARE) Act - which attracted FTX here in September 2021.

“Efforts were made to ensure that very robust regulations were put in place,” Dr Sands said. “We have confidence in the Securities Commission and the hard-working persons that make up that entity.

 “In 2020 the approach to the DARE Act was a highly researched, wide consultation with the financial services to get them to a new arena that was poorly regulated in the rest of the world and so The Bahamas has the most robust legislation for this niche.

 “Now that being said, all the regulations in the world cannot stop a rogue operator. And so if you think about Bernie Madoff who made off with $64 billion worth of people’s money on 5th Avenue, New York. Enron collapsed despite being a publicly traded company being audited by one of the big four accounting firms in the world, think about that.

 “So, people will try to sully the reputation. Our position in the Free National Movement is very clear, let’s find out what the facts are, all of the facts, and let the chips fall where they may. “Let’s get the research done, let’s avoid the unnecessary finger pointing and you know even though we have sought to take a position that is as objective and as nonpartisan as possible, it seems as if there are players in the political world that can’t resist the temptation to try and label this as an FNM problem. How the heck you come to that conclusion is beyond me.”

 On Friday, Mr Pintard posed several questions to the government that he said needed immediate responses.

 “One of the things that we’d like to raise is to what extent the government has invested any Bahamian resources into FTX at any level in any jurisdiction for example,” Mr Pintard said, flanked by FNM officials and supporters. “Is any of NIB’s funds invested with FTX or any other funds from the government?

 “Secondly the government indicated that by December of this year it fully expected to be trading carbon credits on the platform. We’d like to know did the government do its due diligence?

 “They must have since they were extremely comfortable in trading on the platform and we would like to know, the public would like to know, what did they discover when they did their due diligence?

 “Surely by projecting that they intended to trade on the platform they were saying that they were entirely comfortable with everything they saw.

 “The public wishes to see what is it that they saw and where does it now put the carbon trading regime that they had in mind?

 “And so we are very much concerned that the government has not been transparent about the due diligence they have conducted in this regard.”