Gonsalves lashes CDB for 'scraping bottom of barrel' with 'stitch-up' probe of ex-president

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves says former Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) president Gene Leon was "the victim of a stitch-up job" by a bank that was "scraping at the bottom of the barrel" with its investigation.

According to Gonsalves, the CDB  made "unsuccessful attempts” to impugn the character of Leon, whom he described as "a distinguished son of our Caribbean civilisation from St Lucia”.

Gonsalves's lashing is contained in a five-page letter he penned to the CDB board of governors chairman, Ahmed Hussen, a minister of government in Canada, one of the bank's non-borrowing members. 

"There is nothing in the investigator's report to impugn, credibly the integrity, transparency, competence, and quality of the president's leadership and performance. ...He was probably innocence of the egg-shell facade or make-believe sacrosance of some pampered souls in the bank's bureaucracy," the region's longest serving head of government argued. 

Leon resigned in April, claiming "constructive dismissal".

His lawyers gave the CDB until May 4 “to negotiate  an amicable separation” indicating also that their correspondence should be viewed “as our client's pre action protocol letter” regarding the entire situation. 

In his letter, Gonsalves asked what are the next steps in “addressing this debacle”, saying “it certainly does not suit the bank to have its folly forensically examined in excruciating detail" in the courts. 

"Leon, has been injured, and as he has suffered loss and damage, certain things flow inexorably from all this. The bank ought to address this with the same urgency with which it acted at the start of this awful saga; and the bank ought to act with a large generosity of spirit,” he said.

He added: “Gene Leon's integrity remains intact, though unsuccessful attempts were made to have it impugned. He comes out of this sordid matter without blemish or wrong-doing attached to him. This distinguished  son of our Caribbean civilisation ought not to be lynched, metaphorically, any further”.

In January, the CDB disclosed that Leon was sent on administrative leave until April this year, as “an ongoing administrative process”. The bank is the region's premier financial institution.

The CDB has remained mum on the circumstances surrounding the decision. 

Regional leaders have expressed concerns that the proper protocols were not followed in the action against Leon. A committee that reports to the board of directors sent him on leave. There was no reference to the board of governors which employs the president. 

Gonsalves  said he did not comment in the early days of the matter because he “harboured no suspicion" that the Bank's selection of the investigating law firm "was affected by other than an unsullied motivation for the good of the bank and its president.

“I entertained no thought that the reception of the “whistleblower(s) and the inexorable reference to an investigating process was infused with malice, ill-will or other jaundiced vice. Certainly, I saw no dark arts of a metaphoric Brutus in any conspiracy to slay Caesar,' Gonsalves wrote.

But Gonsalves said he was “uneasy about the speed and peremptory manner upon which the entire expedition was launched, inclusive of the seizure or detention of the president's electronic devices and his dispatch on administrative leave with a dazzling promptitude by a body of three persons, all accomplished “under the rules”.

Gonsalves said that the swiftness of the CDB to send Leon on administrative leave, the dismissive response by the board of governor chairman to a request from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States "all conspired to create the public perception that the Bank's President had committed egregious wrongs”.

He said that the day before the investigator's report was to be submitted and considered by the board of governors, Leon submitted his resignation which his lawyers “publicly reaffirmed as constructive dismissal”.

“I have read it (report) carefully. Its contents are threadbare and underwhelming. The report seeks to weave tattered threads into a twisted fabric upon which to ground a narration to justify the Bank's actions; but it has failed, and all persons of reasonableness, judicious temper and balanced judgement, would so conclude.”

Gonsalves wrote that on the "central salacious allegation which excited the prurient at home and abroad, there was absolutely no evidence". He said the “flimsy” nature of the evidence presented in the investigator's report and the “concocted narrative of malfeasance or wrong-doing, lack persuasiveness; there is nothing compelling here". 

“Indeed, the evidence, taken at its highest, leaves  a reasonable and fair-minded reader, whether in the councils of the Bank or in the taverns across any Caribbean country, with the inescapable conclusion that the president was, from the outset, the victim of a stitch-up job,” said Gonsalves, who admitted that Leon could have "acted with a touch of sensitive here and there". 

He said the Caribbean residents may want to know how the investigating American law firm was selected and the payments it received. 

Leon, a St Lucian economist who worked with the International Monetary Fund for 24 years, was elected president of the CDB in January 2021 and started on a five-year contract on May 4, 2021.

- The CMC contributed to this report

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