By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

AN executive at the National Insurance Board in Freeport was fired following allegations that he was assigning contracts to a company in which he owned shares to provide services in Freeport and Abaco.

Craig Nicholls, property manager for NIB in the Northern Region, is accused of allegedly assigning contracts and writing cheques to a company he owns to carry out landscaping and cleaning services at NIB in Freeport and Abaco.

The sums of money involved are not known.

Selena Cooper, an employee at NIB who is believed to be an acquaintance of Nicholls, was also fired.

It is not known if she was in any way involved in the matter.

Nicholls was appointed property manager in 2012 following the last general elections. His duty was to oversee the maintenance and upkeep of the NIB complexes in Grand Bahama and Abaco.

Speaking with The Tribune yesterday, Minister of Labour and National Insurance, Shane Gibson said that in this case, he can illustrate to the public that the systems they have in place at NIB are now clearly working.

“I don’t want to get into the details, but when you find out certain information you have to move on it. We are running a tight ship here. The biggest problem we have at NIB is that we don’t have a standard written policy procedure on certain aspects. I have said it before. Now we are creating clearly defined guidelines. So where we see certain breeches we go in and ensure that they do not happen again,” he said.