“Davis: Money doesn’t just walk out of the treasury” – The Tribune

Excerpt from the article; “INTERIM Progressive Liberal Party Leader Philip ‘Brave’ Davis yesterday called the Minnis administration’s inability to pinpoint $42m of the $150m borrowed under the former Christie administration for hurricane repairs ‘the height of incompetence’.

‘Money doesn’t just walk out of the treasury’, the Cat Island, San Salvador and Rum Cay MP told The Tribune on Monday.

Mr. Davis was one of the several PLP members to take issue with Finance Minister K Peter Turnquest claims that Minnis administration has been unable to track down the $42m.

Mr. Turnquest last Thursday told parliamentarians just because the government has been unable to locate the money, it doesn’t mean [the] it is not unaccounted for.”

I must say that this is when I must admit that I am totally lost; a point has been made that certain funds have been misappropriated but yet members of the former Christie administration are claiming that it is the height of incompetence that these funds are unable to be accounted for; this admission within itself makes the case that the former administration was incompetent to the point to ‘misplace’ the $42m in the first place.

Now, the onus is being placed on the current Free National Movement (FNM) government to give an accounting for the ‘misplaced’ funds.

Is the Minnis administration being labeled incompetent because they are unable to produce the off-shore accounts where these funds may have ended up??

There seems to be a concession that at one time these funds were there and then an admission that at a later point they were not; that is that they had actually been misplaced but I guess it is incompetence on behalf of the current administration to say exactly where the misappropriated fund ended up?  Is this the issue here and are we really trying to sell it to the Bahamian public as fact?

If this is what the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) wishes for the people to believe; that the Minnis administration cannot account for $42m out of the $150m borrowed for hurricane relief under the Christie administration; maybe then Mr. Philip ‘Brave’ Davis, Leader of the Progressive Liberal Party and/or Mr. Chester Cooper shadow minister of Finance would like to educate the Bahamian public on the whereabouts of these funds and just remember the words of Mr. Peter Turnquest, Minister of Finance; “…just because the government has been unable to locate the money, it doesn’t mean [the] it was unaccounted for.”

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