In every other civilised jurisdiction, the bank would have been shuttered and wound down by now, as per the law. This is why the Corruption Index in the Bahamas is so high and foreigners see the Bahamas as a corrupt, non-level playing field. The Bank along with BISX is so Mickey Mouse, that it is beyond funny. It is criminal.

Perry dem gotta use ya money now but wait till after election if dey win you might get somethin....

First of all, it is spelled Basel not Basle.

Secondly, it is highly unusual for a shareholder like the Government, to pay the dividend. Highly unusual. Liked Clockwork Orange unusual. This is proof that the bad loans are politically driven and the government is/was using the Bank to reward cronies. And you wonder why we are a corrupt banana republic?

The Treasury should not be used to pay shareholder dividends of the BoB. It's criminal.

It's not even worth my while to look up what the capitalisation of BoB is, but here are the Basel III requirements:

Here is what Basel III says are the minimum requirements:

Minimum Common Equity Capital Ratio: 4.5%

Capital Conservation Buffer: 2.5%

Minimum common equity plus capital conservation buffer: 7.0%

Phase-in of deductions from CET1: 100%

Minimum Tier 1 Capital: 6.0%

Minimum Total Capital: 8.0%

Minimum Total Capital: 10.5%

Liquidity coverage ratio – minimum requirement: 100%

I am willing to bet that BoB meets none of these. If I were I minority shareholder (I am not that stupid), I would immediately demand the release of the above figures compared to the Basel III mandates.

If they are not met, I would demand the immediate windup and liquidation of the bank.

The Central Bank should take over the keys and run the Bank as this is a critical part of our banking system.

The Central Bank has inspectors, and it has ALLOWED BoB to become this way. It is a paper tiger regulator. The Central Bank doesn't have the moral, ethical or fiduciary compass necessary to do its job.

Yeap...Central Bank is pretty much useless.

I 100% agree with you lkalikl

Ikaliki, you are dead right on this. The government is stealing from us the black hole fund to pay those who buy shares - at a risk of reduced value that they accepted upon purchase.

Pericles Gladstone Christie is nothing but a low life pathetic thief who has already personally authorised by either his action or inaction, as Minister of Finance, the wrongful and illegal plowing of mega-millions of dollars of VAT collected and National Insurance funds into BoB knowing all the while beyond a shadow of doubt that BoB has been for years now and will remain an insolvent financial institution requiring involuntary (compulsory) liquidation. Included in those who have aided and abetted Christie's wrongful and illegal theft from Bahamian taxpayers and National Insurance fund participants of the mega-millions of dollars plowed into an insolvent BoB are the following: Paul McWeeney, the former managing director of BoB and puppet of Christie, Wendy Craigg, the former governor of the Central Bank and another of Christie's puppets; John Rolle, the current governor of the Central Bank who is an indentured servant of Christie; Michael Halkitis, Christie's number one gopher in the Ministry of Finance; every individual who has served as a director of BoB at anytime during the past seven years; Deloitte & Touche, the past auditors of BoB at a time when the fraudulent lending practices involving cronies of Hubert Alexander Ingraham and later Christie began to pick up pace; Keith Davies at BISX for not having long ago halted the trading of BoB's shares as a clearly defunct entity; the immediately past and current Chairman of the Securities Commission; Sean McWeeney (brother of Paul McWeeney), legal counsel for BoB at Graham Thompson & Co; and so on.

Articles published in The Punch in December 2013 informed the Bahamian public that Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) had made the following loans and advances connected to political friends and cronies of Perry Christie:

• $28 million to Leslie Miller and/or entities owned by him and/or members of his immediate family.
• $3.5 million to Obie Wilchcombe & Pleasant Bridgewater re. Universal Distributors Bahamas Ltd., a company apparently now defunct for all intents and purposes.
• $8 million to another senior PLP cabinet minister, rumoured to be pudgy with short stubby grubby dirty sticky fingers.
• $6.3 million to PLP business woman Patricia Mortimer who purportedly is a best friend and business partner of Lady Poodling and the owner of several shops at Nassau International Airport.
• $2.3 million re. GEMS Radio Station which at the time was owned by Debbie Bartlett and Cyprianna McWeeney, the latter being the wife of PLP lawyer Sean McWeeney who is the brother of Paul McWeeney.
• $4.5 million to enterprises owned/controlled by Edward Penn.
• $4.6 million to Phil Lightbourne re. Phil's Food Services (Phil Lightbourne was the front man and spokesman for Ben Frisch who owned Bahamas Food Services up until the PM allowed the Frisch Family to sell it to Sysco Foods (a large U.S. public company) in April 2013.

Keep in mind that BOB is majority owned and controlled by the Bahamas government; accordingly its overall affairs fall directly within the portfolio of Christie as both PM and Minister of Finance. Most, if not all, of the loans and advances mentioned above had to be fully provided for by BOB, and likely have since been either written off by BOB or transferred to Bahamas Resolve or another special purpose entity for nominal value at great cost to hard working honest Bahamian taxpayers. Small wonder that, notwithstanding the mega millions in taxpayers and national insurance participants' funds required to bail out BOB, Perry Christie was only too quick to come to the defense of Paul McWeeney (brother of Sean McWeeney) for having so handsomely rewarded the PM's political friends and business cronies. The PM's agreement to a $750,000 termination bonus being paid to Paul McWeeney says it all!

No doubt Christie contacted certain members of BOB’s board of directors and senior management (Paul McWeeney in particular) in order to intercede in the making of loans and advances on very generous terms to his political friends and business cronies that should have never been granted. All of these shenanigans on the part of Perry Christie clearly evidence that he has a very twisted moral compass by any standard. It is therefore absolutely frightening to think that this warped man has cabinet responsibility as both PM and Minister of Finance for our country's financial affairs.

The SPV or Special Purpose Vehicle of which the government is very fond of using are used to hide outflows from the treasury as well.

An SPV is an entity that issues shares of itself. For all intents and purposes, it is a company (it usually is, or may be incorporated as a limited corporation), So, it needs to be capitalised. For example James Smith needs to collect his six figure income from Resolve. And the toxic loans need to be taken off the books. So the government capitalises Resolve. The big question here, and since there is no Freedom of Information Act, is "Did the government pay any monies to BoB through Resolve when they took the loans off the books?". It is a slick way of siphoning funds from the Treasury to BoB using Resolve as a smokescreen to hide the origin of the money.

The other question is for the $40 million SPV to take up the share issue for BoB to bring it closer to Basel III requirements. We know that the government capitalised the SPV and bought the BoB issue, but I am wondering if they also transferred the shares of the SPV to BoB as well, allowing it to use the $40 million twice -- first as the cash from the SPV and then adding the shares of the SPV to its balance sheet as assets that can be converted to capital. I am not an accountant, but since they are playing footsie with the numbers, anything is possible. It's sad when you are the principal, the tranferee, the owner, and the regulator all in one. Tell me that there is no room for corruption. John Rolle should hang his head in shame and resign.

Well every Bahamian who has invested in a BOB share should vote NO to the PLP along with every BPL customer, every BTC customer, every car gas consumer, every Bahamasair passenger, every grocery buyer and every public school parent ........... that's 98% of the voters

And vote "Yes" for who? The greedy Dimwitted Doc is one hundred times worse than Crooked Christie could ever be, and everyone knows it!

I don't. I think that he has a forward looking team.

Dream on!

The challenges of this bank holds back better performance of the other banks backed by their own Bahamian shareholders funds from doing better as the govt intervenes in its support without holding management responsible. The internationally proper thing would be for the Central Bank to intervene and take over its operations. However for that to happen staff from the Central Bank who have loans at BoB or is paid from govt sources must be prevented from participating in the operation, thirdly persons related by blood must not be a part of the team, fourth persons holding a relationship and are from the same Family Island must be excluded, next persons being connected by virtue of being from the same church or social organization must be excluded, persons being from the same political party must be excluded. Obviously local agencies paid by the Bank should not be allowed to comment on the Bank they are investigating. In short given the aforementioned connections which may compromise correcting deficiencies it would be prudent to call in outsiders and the last outsider the Canadian report has never been published. As a part of he global financial centres where all are connected we must act first and fully examine the bank and punish wrongdoers and close if necessary so that the rest are not affected further.