Credit_Suisse, Pictet, Lombard, etc. will all follow shortly. The Swiss financial institutions tend to all move in lock step, especially when they find themselves lacking in Swiss Nationals who are willing to reside in the Bahamas. Can't think of a single Swiss financial institution on the ground in Haiti. Why should the Bahamas be any different the way it is headed!

You folks are simply too naive if you believe Shameless Shane. Government did a back door deal with the unions such that all civil servants will receive pay increases equal to the average annual cost of their double dipping for the past three years or so. This is why the civil servant union members are not in an uproar about a benefit being taken away from them that they have wrongfully enjoyed for so many years. Bottom line: Hard working honest taxpayers in the private sector will still be getting screwed!

John Rolle, like Ishmael Lightbourne, is just a mouth piece for Christie and Halkitis. Rumour has it Rolle did little if anything to stamp out major corruption amongst certain large importers and their "favourite" customs officers during the years that he headed up Bahamas Customs. If true, then he too bears great responsibility for our National Debt being where it is today. A properly enforced Customs regime free of major corruption would have gone a long ways to mitigating the need for a draconian suicidal VAT!

Freddie calls into question his own character every time he opens his mouth and he seems to have an insatiable appetite for doing so!

any woman who would vote for this pathetic arrogant moron deserves to be handed over to him for a good spanking. sadly, the same applies to so many others that sit in our parliament today. not a one of them has sufficient quantity of the right testosterone to be called a man, not counting mitchell of course!

Small wonder that Owen Bethel and Ishmael Lightbourne happen to be very good friends. These guys should have been imprisoned a long time ago. How is it the little man accused of stealing food to feed his hungry small children ends up in Fox Hill Prison, but the big time thieves like Bethel and Lightbourne stay free to steal another day is beyond comprehension?! Bethel and Lightbourne, like so many of our corrupt greedy politicians and their equally corrupt greedy business cronies, are hard wired to steal and therefore should be locked away where they belong.

To the Honestman commentator above: you fail to realise the the disasterous implications of making it legal for the fnm and plp alike to obtain funding from the criminal enterprises run by the numbers bosses! the fnm and plp parties have broken just about every anti-money laundering law that they themselves have put in place as a result of their propensity to accept the well known proceeds of crime associated with the numbers bosses. Hubert, Christie and their cohorts need to be held accountable by the Bahamian people for their crimes and not given a free pass that will evidence to the world the decay and destruction of our now very fragile democracy. It's really all as simple as that!

Bahamian voters all over the country are finally starting to realise that the PLP and FNM alike bear full responsibility for the sad state of our country's financial affairs, the exorbitant increases in our cost of living, our constant fear of crime, our failed judicial system rife with corrupt lawyers and the overall continued severe deterioration in the quality of our lives. We must out rightly reject and topple (by force if necessary) PLP and FNM sponsored dictatorships that serve to enrich the ruling corrupt political elite and their equally criminal and greedy business cronies who constantly seek to unjustly benefit themselves at the cruel expense of many hard working honest Bahamians who stand little or no chance of making ends meet in a rigged society and economy.

Both Hubert and Perry sold their souls to the Numbers' Bosses during the last three or four general elections and it is these criminal thugs who are now running the country. Wake up Bahamians to the reality that neither the FNM nor PLP represents the interests of the average Bahamian or the interests of the Bahamas at large. Get ready you poor suckers that keep voting either PLP or FNM to chow down on some serious tax increases like VAT that will undoubtedly drive your cost of living through the roof but not affect in any way the unjustly rich quality of life enjoyed by the criminal political elite of the FNM and PLP and their unscrupulous equally criminal and greedy business cronies.

the admissions here by halkitis combined with the deafening silence of the pm (who is also the minister of finance) clearly establish the grounds for a parliamentary procedure known as a vote of no confidence. both the plp and fnm governments alike have failed the bahamian people. all of this insidious tax corruption took place under the likes of hubert ingraham, bill allen, perry christie and james smith. these individuals are directly responsible for years of failed tax collection policies as a result of their willingness to turn a blind eye to the tax corruption now ingrained in the culture of most politicians and their business cronies like "snake" and so many more like him. ingraham, christie, allen and smith must somehow be held accountable for their complicity in crimes against the state that have robbed the bahamian people of their quality of life. we need a commission of enquiry headed by suitably qualified and independent foreign commissions appointed by an external body to gather the evidence and lay the ground work for the criminal charges to be heard by an international court.