Decades after the collapse of the Caribbean Sea Island Cotton Company (CARSICOT) in Barbados, Sir Warwick Franlin, the Minister of Agriculture at whom many a finger was pointed in connection with the debacle, has spoken out.
“I am glad to give you the facts,” he said when the DAILY NATION quizzed him on the subject during an interview last week.
Branding the allegations as “unfortunate and dishonest”, he declared his innocence of any improper involvement with CARSICOT.
“I had absolutely nothing out of it. I have never gotten a penny, a loaf of bread, a sweet drink out of that CARSICOT,” he stated emphatically.
The company, formed in 1988 as a joint venture between Canadian investor Nitin Amersey and the Barbados Government, became shrouded in controversy that saw Government opting out of the arrangement and the seizure of company assets.
Debate about the then Minister of Agriculture’s role has swirled ever since, and the CARSICOT case continues to be mentioned whenever the issue of political scandals is raised.
As he sought to clear the air, Sir Warwick first pointed out: “CARSICOT at that time was a public company with the Government owning 40 per cent . . . so it was not anything that I had oversight of.”
Giving a background, he said when the Barbados Labour Party administration “lost the election in 1986”, there had been another minister of agriculture in place and “Barbados’ cotton was being sold to a buyer at US$2.40 per pound or something like that”.
That purchaser, Sir Warwick claimed, “wanted to pay less” when the Democratic Labour Party administration took office following its success at the polls in 1986.
“I said no, I was not going to sell it for that. So this gentleman Amersey came down and offered to establish this company with the Government.”
Sir Warwick said the then permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture “took a lead and became chief executive of CARSICOT . . . so it was a private company”.
He added he was out of the island; someone else was acting as minister; and only on his return did he learn of “all the confusion” surrounding a shipment of cotton that arrived on the island and “was discovered not to be sea island cotton, but cotton which came in from Belize and was labelled sea island cotton”. The shipment was impounded.
“I said this is a matter for the company that is dealing with it and I enquired about it, to discover that this company had intended and had started to do a lot of cultivation of lands in Barbados for cotton. [They] had indicated that they were growing some of it in Belize.
“But we had known that the genuine sea island cotton was only grown in Barbados and I think one or two of the islands. so it was not sea island cotton, and it was impounded.”
Sir Warwick charged he was the victim of “unkind” reports by the NATION for which his political opponent at the time was writing a weekly column for the newspaper. A host of a call-in radio programme also focused on CARSICOT “every day” he claimed, projecting it as “the biggest scandal in the world”.
But he declared: “I had absolutely nothing to do with it.” (GC)
