The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Ministry of Finance’s top official yesterday asserted it was “beyond dispute” that boating fees due to the Government had not been paid amid demands from the marina industry to “show us the evidence”.

Simon Wilson, the financial secretary, questioned to Tribune Business what the Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) and its members “want me to do” as the concerns surrounding the Government-ordered decision to close the SeaZPass online portal showed no signs of abating.

While he described the purported failure to remit yacht charter fees and other boating-related revenues collected by SeaZPass as “indisputable”, an ABM past president called upon the Government to “show us the “proof” that any of these funds were never directly deposited to its Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) account.

Peter Maury, who confirmed he was called in to a meeting with Mr Wilson and Ministry of Finance officials regarding their SeaZPass concerns, told this newspaper that the Government has yet to provide any evidence to back-up its non-payment assertions despite requests from himself and the Association.

He also argued that the Government had yet to share the results of a Deloitte & Touche audit of the online portal. However, Mr Wilson yesterday said that was not the accounting firm’s remit, and that it had been retained to conduct a wider assessment of government tax and revenue collections from multiple different “channels”. As a result, the ABM had no right to receive a copy of Deloitte’s findings.

“I’ve said it before: We had a meeting with Peter Maury, who represented the ABM. We provided him with non-public information and we said this is why we have to do this,” Mr Wilson reiterated of the SeaZPass portal’s closure. “Come on, man. What do they want me to do?

“It is indisputable that money was collected and not paid to the Government. That is beyond dispute. We said to the marinas: ‘We have no problem with the portal. We have a problem with this particular vendor’, and left it at that. I don’t know why they keep going on about this because we met with them and provided detailed non-public information.”

The ‘vendor’ in question is Omni Financial Services, which acted as SeaZPass’s payments facilitator and collector, ensuring those funds were remitted to the Government. Tribune Business previously revealed that the online portal was closed over a dispute as to whether Omni had remitted the full fee sums due to the Public Treasury.

Omni asserted that all sums due and owing had been paid in response to Ministry of Finance allegations that some $5m remained outstanding, vehemently denying the latter claims. Mr Wilson, though, yesterday indicated that the dispute still has yet to be resolved.

Several sources, though, have questioned why, if the Government had concerns, it simply did not require that the digital payments provider be changed and allow SeaZ Pass to continue with a new provider. Mr Wilson indicated he had said as much to the ABM, but Mr Maury told this newspaper on Friday that the industry body never got a response from the Government when it asked if replacing Omni would resolve all issues.

“I’m the one who they told they were going to cancel the SeaZPass portal,” the former ABM president told this newspaper. “I asked: ‘On what basis?’ They said because there had been non-payment, and I said: ‘Show me the evidence’. They gave us no evidence.”

Mr Maury said that during SeaZPass’s 16 months in operation, every Friday the ministries of finance, tourism and transport, as well as the Port Department, were provided with reports and reconciliation statements showing how much had been collected, how much had been paid into the Government’s RBC account.

“We have evidence of every wire sent. Every Friday the Government was given an accounting of what was paid,” he asserted. “I was the one who sat in the meetings, and they gave us no evidence. They said they were going to do an audit, and Deloitte & Touche contacted me. If the Government is so sure of it’s position, show us the report and what the findings are.

“Show us the proof. We can show where $4.3m was paid to the Government. Show us where it wasn’t paid. We have the evidence of where the wires were sent to the Government. You either cannot reconcile your bank statements or the money was not paid. Show us where it was not paid. If you cannot show us that it means you cannot reconcile your own bank statements.”

However, Mr Wilson said the Government was under no obligation to share Deloitte & Touche’s findings with the ABM because it had not been tasked with a specific focus on the SeaZPass online portal and monies collected through it. “Deloitte’s audit was for a different purpose,” he told Tribune Business.

“We have to make a decision in terms of how we collect our revenue. We engaged Deloitte to assist with that. This has nothing to do with them [the ABM]. It looks at this broader question of the collection of government revenues from various different channels.”

The SeaZPass controversy erupted again last week after the issue was raised at the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association’s (BHTA) Board of Directors meeting. Marques Williams, the current ABM president, told the same meeting that attorneys have been retained over the Government-enforced closure of the online portal that the Association spearheaded to allow client vessels to pay their yacht charter fees and other relevant fees.

Mr Williams said the ABM was “at a standstill”, and “kind of in limbo”, over the SeaZPass portal’s fate after it was recently revealed that the Government had awarded a $3.355m contract to DigieSoft Technologies to develop exactly the same solution even though the Association’s had been provided at no expense to the Bahamian taxpayer.

The proposal, he added, saw SeaZPass developed at no cost to the Government or taxpayer, and with all revenues deposited to the Government’s account. The developer was to receive a 2 percent commission to recover its costs, which was to be shared with the ABM, and Omni 1.5 percent to cover operational expenses. The ABM was to use its share of the 2 percent to help maintain navigation aids.

The ABM and Omni were said to have yet to receive a commission payment from the Government prior to the online portal’s shutdown, and Mr Williams said there had been no response to inquiries as to how the Davis administration plans to move forward. He said the closure meant boaters and yachters lack a convenient mechanism to pay due fees to the Government.