The former president of the defunct Hindu Credit Union (HCU), Harry Harnarine, is lashing out at “creoles and Christians,” blaming them for the demise of the credit union. On Friday, the Prime Minister laid the 378-page Anthony Colman report into the HCU which referred Harnarine to the Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard and Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams to launch criminal investigations into 18 items identified in the Coleman report.
In a CNC3 news report yesterday, Harnarine was quoted as saying the “bitter hatred of creoles and Christians” was at the heart of the credit giant’s collapse. Harnarine said the HCU stayed true to the principles of Hinduism and was ready to face the courts to defend his choices and his actions while at the helm of the credit union.
He described the allegations and implications contained in the report as “recycled goods” and was nothing more that a multi-million dollar “smoke screen” designed to hide the truth. He said he will give his side of the story in court. The report into the collapse of HCU found that former People’s National Movement (PNM) Labour minister, Danny Montano’s “political decisions” played a role in the lack of controls over the over-reaching credit union.
While detailing the 33 internal reasons for HCU’s demise, Colman also noted Montano as factoring in the single key external. “The main external cause of HCU’s collapse was the defective supervisory regime as operated by the CCD (Commissioner for Co-operative Development),” the report noted. The report did not find the then director of the CCD culpable, however, but found that the inability to properly supervise stemmed from staff shortages and a lack of funding to operate an inquiry.
The report found that while the CCD made applications for such funding for an inquiry to Montano, it was refused. “That left him (CCD head) unable to appoint an outside firm of accountants to conduct what was likely to be an expensive investigation unless he could obtain funding from the MOL. That put the CCD in the position where his independent judgment could be obstructed by a political decision to withhold money,” the report found.
The Colman report also noted that such a decision by Montano “was in effect substituting his own judgement for that of the CCD by attaching greater weight to avoiding the risk of a run on HCU with the possible impact on other credit unions than to an inquiry directed to the protection of the members of and depositors in HCU.” Several attempts to contact Montano were unsuccessful.