Sint Maarten Housing Development Foundation (“SMHDF”) wants to hereby inform the general public that the service agreement with Mr. Henry Lynch has been dissolved as per February 4, 2015, with immediate effect. This, following the suspension by SMHDF of Mr. Henry Lynch dated December 12, 2014.
In the time period between the suspension with pay and the decision to terminate the service agreement with immediate effect, SMHDF commissioned further investigations into the previously established financial irregularities within its organization. The results of those further investigations performed by also by the newly appointed interim management team coupled with unsatisfactory, incomplete and untruthful answers given by Mr. Lynch during the first time that an opportunity was given to him by SMHDF to give reason and account and his subsequent refusal after that first meeting to attend further meetings to explain matters, necessitated the immediate termination of his service agreement. This termination decision was premised on amongst others the following grounds:
- the structural employment by Mr. Henry Lynch of employees of SMHDF to work on personal projects of companies of Mr. Lynch. Mr. Lynch consequently partially financed the construction of the projects of his personal companies at the expense of SMHDF (read: the general Sint Maarten public and more in particular its less affluent citizens);
- the structural use by Mr. Lynch of the credit card of SMHDF for personal use for in total more than Naf 100.000. – over the course of the years. The expenditures or not, at least not properly and truthfully accounted for;
- purchasing building material on the account/expense of SMHDF whilst only providing SMHDF with some of the goods purchased and as such retaining or causing the remaining purchased goods to be retained by third parties or by himself;
- violation of the entertainment allowance more thanNaf 35.000.- for the year 2014 and making expenditures that completely do not fit the goal and scope of business activities of SMHDF. Mr. Lynch untruthfully denied that he had an entertainment allowance and as such limit for such expenditures;
- violation of his gas allowance with more than Naf. 2,900.00 years 2013 and 2014, whilst untruthfully maintaining that the gas allowance did not apply to him;
- violation of the telephone allowance with more than Naf 16,000.00 for the year 2014 whilst untruthfully maintaining that these extra expenditures were sanctioned by the Supervisory Board in 2011;
- structurally not complying with various reporting obligations pursuant to the Management Rules and Regulations;
- structurally not complying with the obligations to provide external auditors with information, causing that to date there are no financial statements for the book years 2013 and 2014 and only recently SMHDF managed to obtain a draft financial statement for 2012. In the time period between 2007 – 2011, thus before the management tenure of Mr. Lynch, the financial statements were always finalized in time or were only very shortly delayed. The structural and far-reaching violation of the obligation to provide information, also towards the investigators that performed so-called quick scans, is according to SMHDF clearly a part of the larger scheme by Mr. Lynch to justify personal expenditures, at the cost/expense of SMHDF;
- deliberately allowing a certain contractor using three (3) companies that are clearly linked to this contractor, possibly by means of so-called Strawman-constructions, to participate on various occasions in public tenders as if they were separate companies. The consequence thereof is that of the 19 projects realized in 2013, 13 were granted to in essence one and the same contractor, for in total Naf 3,614,217.30;
- publishing whilst being suspended various work related threats on a Facebook page.
Presently, the commissioned forensic audit investigation is still ongoing to more in particular to determine the scope of the total financial damages suffered by SMHDF, as a consequence of referenced financial irregularities.
SMHDF retains all rights and defenses to take further appropriate judicial actions against Mr. Henry Lynch.