Is the HCU the local Enron? Click to read my column

To many- and depositors and employees primarily- the particularly enraging element of the much touted HCU asset profile is the way it became heavily weighted in favour of land and buildings, acquired at premium prices, which now fall to be disposed off in a fire sale. Equally enraging will be the fact that the lands and buildings were generally used to house “HCU Group” activity which had no real commercial value, so that these assets existed on the books with no income stream independent of the “Group”.

The danger of that type of “off the books” arrangement is twofold. First, those funds and the use of them did not benefit from the Commissioner’s oversight; were put out of the reach of depositors who wished to retrieve their deposits and were generally put into “investment” vehicles which, on their own, were incapable of producing reasonable returns and in any event were too illiquid to permit conversion into other types of investments. Under pressure in Jamaica, Cash Plus’ Carlos Hill declared in October 2006 that Cash Plus was not a financial institution, commercial bank, investment advisor or securities dealer and did not fall under the purview of any fiscal regulatory body (Jamaica Gleaner, October 2006).

Second, like Enron, it would have been difficult for any regulator to have sight of the HCU’s true liabilities, especially if, like Enron the assets were booked with the Credit Union and the liabilities were kept in the “special purpose vehicles” in the hope that at least one of them will strike a rich vein of gold and compensate for the liabilities held by the many others. Realistically, none of then seemed likely to do that and every concerned voice was answered by bold statements of success and orchestrated protests and marches.

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