High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad says a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of East­ern Cred­it Union’s “prac­tices, poli­cies and modus operan­di” may be need­ed.

Seep­er­sad made the state­ment in a judge­ment he hand­ed down on an li­bel and slan­der mat­ter be­tween East­ern Cred­it Union’s for­mer di­rec­tor Har­vey Bor­ris and the cred­it union’s for­mer pres­i­dent Wayne Estra­da.

Bor­ris’ claims were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed.

“Sub­se­quent to the tri­al, the Court fur­ther not­ed a me­dia re­port in re­la­tion to the Las Vivien­das prop­er­ty and a pur­port­ed sit­u­a­tion of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty with re­gard to un­us­able plans which cost­ed mil­lions,” Seep­er­sad stat­ed.

On May 22, the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian pub­lished an ar­ti­cle ti­tled “East­ern Cred­it Union pays $4M for wrong draw­ing plan.”

This fol­lowed a Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian ti­tled “Cred­it Union con­fu­sion” which high­light­ed that since Richard No­ray was elect­ed pres­i­dent of East­ern Cred­it Union one year ago, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and one of its di­rec­tor were dis­missed, and two oth­er di­rec­tors were sus­pend­ed from the board.

And, dur­ing that time, the body tasked with su­per­vis­ing cred­it unions al­so launched an en­quiry, and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to East­ern’s op­er­a­tions.

“In ad­di­tion, mere weeks af­ter this tri­al was con­duct­ed, this Court heard an­oth­er tri­al in CV2021-03926 Math­ews v East­ern Cred­it Union. In this yet un­de­ter­mined tri­al, the Court is tasked to de­ter­mine whether the Cred­it Union’s elec­tions should be set aside,” Seep­er­sad stat­ed.

That judge­ment is ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed down next week.

“The East­ern Cred­it Union and its sub­sidiaries play an in­te­gral role in the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial land­scape and the fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties dis­charged by elect­ed of­fi­cers are sacro­sanct. In the dis­charge of these fidu­cia­ry oblig­a­tions, Com­mit­tee and Board mem­bers are re­quired to ex­er­cise due dili­gence and en­sure that they have no per­son­al in­ter­est which may colour or af­fect any de­ci­sion to be ef­fect­ed,” Seep­er­sad stat­ed in his judge­ment.

Seep­er­sad said the “fre­quen­cy and na­ture of the lit­i­ga­tion with which the Cred­it Union and /or its ex­ec­u­tive or for­mer ex­ec­u­tives are sub­sumed and the pub­lic air­ing of con­cerns sur­round­ing the Cred­it Union, in­stils sig­nif­i­cant dis­qui­et in the Court’s mind.”

“The pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances sug­gests that there may be a need for a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the Cred­it Union’s prac­tices, poli­cies and modus operan­di,” he stat­ed.

“Con­se­quent­ly the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship and the Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tives may wish to adopt a more proac­tive ap­proach so as to en­sure that the high­est stan­dards of prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion are adopt­ed in the dis­charge of the so­ci­ety’s busi­ness,” Seep­er­sad stat­ed.

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