Cementing a rehabilitated reputation

Congratulations to Dr Joshua Safeek for his new cement plant at Everton Berbice. Apparently if you spend enough money you can have the Prime Minister come to your ribbon cutting and endorse your rehabilitated reputation.

After all it was only back in 2008 that Safeek was charged with trying to evade $300M in duties while importing Polar beer as soda. Now why did that case quietly disappear again?

And then there was the little matter of the insurance fraud from December 29, 2004, when a bogus US$2M insurance claim via Safeek’s GuyFlag  was submitted to its reinsurance agent AON Re in relation to the Sacred Heart fire.

That’s why the European Union objected to Safeek’s rebranded Caricom Insurance being in charge of the Linden Economic Advancement Fund and why the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance denied it a licence even up to the time when Commissioner Maria van Beek was forced to flee the country and resign her post in April 2009 having been shot by a lone gunman on Lombard St.

Safeek was himself shot at by unknown gunmen while driving through La Penitence market back in January 2006.

To date it is not clear what licence the insurance firm now has but having former human services ministerBibi Shadick and former finance minister Saisnarine Kowlessar on the board must make any red tape disappear.

In the meantime we await the $5BN plant to bottle a multi-line of juices, soft drinks, water and beer “with a three-year expansion project which will result in two other plants in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.”