Desperate fight of the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) to prevent inspection – hearing on 17 March 2023.

Good time of the day dear Friends and Supporters,

Thank you for coming and for reading our story. If you are first time on our website, here is the introduction to our story.

Our last hearing was just on Friday, 17 March, before the Hon. Madame Justice Carla D. Card-Stubbs of the Supreme Court of the Bahamas.

It was only two days before the news about UBS buying Credit Suisse was officially coming out, and it was about a seemingly small technical detail –  for leave to apply for Judicial Review against SCB refusal to allow us inspection of the filing relating to its registrants, which it must do b it’s own statute (Securities Industry Act 2011, section 158(2,a)).

But,

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war,

the Ministry of Truth with lies,

the Ministry of Love with torture

and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. ” – George Orwell

And The Securities Commission of the Bahamas is concerned to not disclose information, to not allow the inspection about its registrants. even though in the

Securities Industry Act 2011, section 158(2,a) says: – – – shall make all documents or information required to  filed with it available for public inspection. –

As fro today, you can not know when the persons were first registered, or who was registered in previous years, which exams they took, what is and was their qualification all what you can get is the PDF list of the registrants within Securities Industry Act 2011 as of 31 January 2023.

But SCB was ferocious in defending, the leading attorney Gladstone Brown energetically advanced a number of  “brillant” arguments, sadly for him, in his skeleton arguments was not even one case where the Leave would be requested for the Regulating Body to fulfill its statutory obligations.

Supported by the two affidavits of the SCB Executive Director Christina Rolle (2 March and 17 March, 2023), the lawyer enthusiastically presented the main concerns of his employer:

– Applicants, we, are in litigation with UBS and  we can use those dates against  UBS;

Bravo UBS, it now has a new helping hand. Not simply  law – firm, but the SCB, in the person of ts  Executive Director, is clearly more concerned  with procrastinating these proceedings. if not shut it done, rather to fulfill it obligations. I wrote about the SCB Board ‘s conflict of interests in the penultimate paragraph of this article .

– the requested information is confidential:

this would be a good approach, next time your taxi driver  makes a car-incident and his employer will say that his/her driving license is confidential and the Road Traffic Department will support it, and be Forbidden forever to ask for licenses in bars, restaurants, stores and in the hospitals – never dare to ask for such “confidential” information, especially from the Regulating authorities.

A very brilliant precedent.

The cherry on the cake was an attempt by SCB to accuse us of obtaining and disclosing some confidential information in our affidavit of 3rd March 2023 (the certificates of UBS persons under SIA 1999- think yourself how “confidential” it is ), but in all seriousness Christina Rolle stated exactly that in her affidavits.

But when I explained that all the documents are public and were disclosed by UBS during the discovery, poor SCB dropped the argument. 

I believe SCB only missed to write detailed instructions to FINRA, since it seems FINRA is all about breaching any “confidentiality, and with one click you can know . For example by clicking on the name Kevin Lee Price , the former head of the UBS (Bahamas) trade desc, you can see that he was registered firstly in 1992 , that from 1994 -1998 he served for Bernie L. Madoff .

I urge Chrstina Rolle to share her expertise and help FINRA to start to be updated with the more recent criteria of privacy protection, exposed in Mrs. Rolle Affidavits.

Aside from jokes, I truly hope that Justice will see Light.

Hon. Madame Justice reserved her ruling, and we are all waiting and crossing our fingers.

Thank you for reading and sharing, thank you for staying with us. and please remember to sign our petition if you have not yet.

With blessings wil close now,

Irina

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