NASSAU, Bahamas — A well-known businessman yesterday urged The Bahamas to “stand united” in the face of implosion as he blasted the Opposition’s leader for trying to “score cheap political brownie points” over the affair, The Tribune reported on Friday, November 25, in an article written by Business Editor Neil Hartnell.
Sir Franklyn Wilson, the Arawak Homes and Sunshine Holdings chairman, told Tribune Business that some of Michael Pintard’s comments were “worthy of condemnation” as he warned that a divided political leadership will make it much harder for The Bahamas to withstand international criticism over the crypto exchange’s failure.
Arguing that the Free National Movement (FNM) leader was effectively now shunning a digital assets regulatory regime that was passed, and implemented, by an administration in which he was a Cabinet minister, Sir Franklyn said FTX was not The Bahamas’ “first rodeo” when it came to high-profile cross-border corporate failures on an international scale.
Recalling his appointment as liquidator for Commodore Computers, which in the 1980s and early 1990s was arguably that industry’s biggest name, Sir Franklyn said himself and his attorney, the late Paul Adderley, were able to reach an agreement with US creditors over how the company was to be wound-up.
Noting that FTX’s Bahamian court-appointed provisional liquidators face the same situation today, namely competition for control and assets with the group’s US-appointed chief executive and Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, he added that this nation must ensure the outside world sees only “competence” from its judges, attorneys and regulators in how the crypto exchange’s fate is dealt with moving forward.
This, Sir Franklyn said, will be critical to protecting The Bahamas’ integrity and good name which is now “at risk”. Acknowledging that “there’s no doubt this has hurt us”, he added that the country must also “defend our laws” which have come under external attack after the Securities Commission obtained a Supreme Court Order to protect digital assets under the Bahamian FTX subsidiary’s control by having them transferred to “wallet” under its control.
Mr Pintard, though, last night hit back “in the strongest terms” at Sir Franklyn’s comments by describing them as “off base”. He added that both himself and the Opposition have been “measured” in their public comments on FTX, and said they had sought to fill the “vacuum” created by the Government’s relative silence on the affair through “aggressively” defending The Bahamas and its regulatory regime.
Sir Franklyn, meanwhile, said FTX’s collapse did not necessarily mean there were weaknesses or deficiencies in The Bahamas’ regulatory regime. “Sometimes businesses fail. The fact it’s a big business, so what?” he asserted. “They fail sometimes. Sometimes the chief executives, the leaders of companies, may act improperly, sometimes criminally. That doesn’t mean the system is flawed or anything like that,” he told Tribune Business. See complete article in The Tribune at http://www.tribune242.com/news/2022/nov/25/sir-frankyn-ftx-not-our-first-rodeo/
