PM calls Eustace ‘nasty’ for making remarks about his ailing mother

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has said he did not know that the money held by his mother in an account at the St Vincent Building and Loan Association (BLA) had been withdrawn.{{more}}

He also says he thinks it is wrong for the Leader of the Opposition to drag the name of his ailing 93-year-old mother into the Building and Loan matter.

The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance was responding yesterday to opposition leader Arnhim Eustace, who said that he had been reliably informed that over EC$1 million in the name of the prime minister’s mother, Theresa Francis, had been withdrawn from the BLA.

Eustace said the money was withdrawn in the final months last year, when the Ministry of Finance supervised the BLA.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) took over supervision of the BLA on November 12, 2012.

When contacted by SEARCHLIGHT, Gonsalves said that he did not know his brothers had withdrawn the money.

The prime minister said the account was in his mother’s name nominally.

“My mother and father had an account there from the 1940s, I believe. When my father died in 2001, my mother became the sole beneficiary of the account and then she put my two brothers’ names, so that it is not a part of my father’s estate of which I am a beneficiary,” Gonsalves explained.

“It is my mother who gave my two brothers that money. So, they would normally draw.

“In fact, on the day when I put in my money, I even said that my mother, Theresa Francis, and my father had an account from so long, and she still has an account here from which my brothers, in whose names the account is with her, draw the interest to take care of her in her old age,” he continued.

On February 4, Gonsalves deposited $20,000 in a special account at the BLA and bought $1,000 worth of shares in the name of his daughter Soleil.

He told SEARCHLIGHT that when he checked with his brother yesterday, after hearing what the Opposition Leader had said, he learned that the money had been withdrawn on October 1, 2012.

“What is special about October? I knew nothing about what they (the brothers) were doing.

“The issue is this; this is a withdrawal which took place on October 1, before Luke had written his letter…,” he said.

Economist Luke Browne wrote a letter to the Vincentian newspaper on January 18, 2013, which precipitated a run on the BLA.

“If when we (the Ministry of Finance) started to regulate in 2009, what I know … I have tons of information here, about weaknesses, I could have gone to them and told them to take out the money. Never did it!” he said.

The Minister of Finance said even in 2009, when there was a run of EC$10 million on Building and Loan, he did not remove the money.

“Mr Eustace is nasty… it is plain worthless for a woman in a wheelchair, who is 93 and who has Alzheimers, to drag her name in this thing, in a matter in which I have nothing to do with,” the prime minister said. (DD)