A com­pa­ny con­trolled by Michael Lee-Chin, who is the chair­man of NCB Fi­nan­cial Group, has failed to make the fi­nal pay­ment of US$8 mil­lion plus in­ter­est on a two-year note, which was due yes­ter­day, Au­gust 30, sources close to the is­sue told Guardian Me­dia.

On Thurs­day, the sources said Lee-Chin-con­trolled Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd wire trans­ferred US$2 mil­lion to Re­pub­lic Bank’s Wealth Man­age­ment di­vi­sion, which serves as the trustee of the note, and pro­posed a new re­pay­ment sched­ule, which would ex­tend the fi­nal pay­ment to the week end­ing Sep­tem­ber 20, 2024.

Port­land Bar­ba­dos pro­posed to pay the bal­ances of funds in the fol­low­ing tranch­es in Sep­tem­ber:

* US$2 mil­lion dur­ing the week start­ing on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 2;

* US2 mil­lion dur­ing the week start­ing Sep­tem­ber 9; and

* US$2 mil­lion, plus ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in­ter­est, dur­ing the week start­ing Sep­tem­ber 16.

Re­pub­lic Bank is re­port­ed to have re­quest­ed that the note­hold­ers pro­vide writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion (by re­ply e-mail) that they agree to the ex­ten­sion of the fi­nal pay­ment to the week end­ing Sep­tem­ber 20, 2024, the sources said.

They said that as with pre­vi­ous de­lays in pay­ment, in­ter­est would be charged at the de­fault rate of 12.25 per cent per an­num.

The sources al­so said Mr Lee-Chin of­fered to meet with the note­hold­ers next week.

Lee-Chin wrote to the trustee on Au­gust 13, re­quest­ing a 15-day ex­ten­sion, from Au­gust 15 to 30, to make the fi­nal pay­ment of US$8 mil­lion, which was due on Au­gust 15.

The sources said Lee-Chin told the trustee that the re­quest for the 15-day ex­ten­sion was nec­es­sary be­cause the fund­ing arrange­ment to make the pay­ment of US$8 mil­lion plus in­ter­est had been de­layed un­til the end of Au­gust.

The Au­gust 15 pay­ment was part of an agree­ment put in place by the note­hold­ers, the trustee and Lee-Chin on May 9, fol­low­ing the Ja­maican-born busi­ness­man fail­ing to make the pre­vi­ous fi­nal bul­let pay­ment on the note on April 30, 2024.

That agree­ment, which was signed by Lee-Chin, re­quired Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) to make a first pay­ment of US$8 mil­lion plus in­ter­est to the trustee on or be­fore May 29; the trustee was due to re­ceive the sec­ond pay­ment of US$4 mil­lion on or be­fore June 15 with the fi­nal pay­ment of US$8 mil­lion plus in­ter­est due to the trustee on or be­fore Au­gust 15.

Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) was late in mak­ing the first two pay­ments.

The May 9 agree­ment al­so states that the in­ter­est on the note start­ed at 8.25 per cent. But be­cause Lee-Chin missed the April 30,2024 bul­let pay­ment, the in­ter­est rate on the three-part arrange­ment was in­creased to 10.25 per cent, which was the in­ter­est rate spec­i­fied in the sup­ple­men­tal trust deed of 8.25 per cent plus the de­fault rate of 2 per cent.

“How­ev­er, should the com­pa­ny de­fault on any of its pay­ment oblig­a­tions as spec­i­fied in this agree­ment, the com­pa­ny will pay note­hold­ers in­ter­est at the rate of 12.25 per cent per an­num, be­ing the de­fault rate of 2 per cent, plus the cur­rent rate of 10.25 per cent,” ac­cord­ing to the May 9 agree­ment.