Pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), Dr. Hy­gi­nus ‘Gene’ Leon, has re­signed with “im­me­di­ate ef­fect” from the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a three-page let­ter sent to the Bank by his St. Lu­cia-based lawyers, Leon is of the opin­ion that “he will nev­er be treat­ed fair­ly” af­ter he had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave in Jan­u­ary.

“It is al­so ev­i­dent that the Bank has lost all trust and con­fi­dence in our client by the fail­ure of the board of gov­er­nors to pre­vent the con­tin­ued vi­o­la­tions of its Char­ter, poli­cies, rules and reg­u­la­tions with re­gard to its elect­ed Pres­i­dent.

“Our client has there­fore made the ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to re­sign his elect­ed po­si­tion of the Pres­i­dent of the Bank with im­me­di­ate ef­fect”.

The lawyers have giv­en the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion un­til May 4 “to ne­go­ti­ate un­am­i­ca­ble sep­a­ra­tion” in­di­cat­ing al­so that their cor­re­spon­dence should be viewed “as our client’s pre ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter” re­gard­ing the en­tire sit­u­a­tion.

In the three-page let­ter, dat­ed April 21, 2024, and head­lined “Re: Dr. Hy­gi­nus “Gene”Leon, Res­ig­na­tion and Con­struc­tive Dis­missal, a copy of which has been ob­tained by the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC), Leon’s St. Lu­cia-based lawyers said they would be mov­ing to the courts in Bar­ba­dos “or any oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion more ap­pro­pri­ate, to en­force our client’s le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights”.

In Jan­u­ary it was dis­closed that Dr Leon, had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave un­til April this year, as “an on­go­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive process” con­tin­ued at the re­gion’s pre­mier fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

The CDB has re­mained mum on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­ci­sion to send the St. Lu­cian-born econ­o­mist on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, with the act­ing pres­i­dent Isaac Solomon, con­firm­ing at a bank news con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary that “there is an in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive process in­volv­ing the pres­i­dent.

In their let­ter, the lawyers wrote that “On April 16, 2024, 40 hours af­ter our client’s leave ex­pired, our client re­ceived a let­ter of no­ti­fi­ca­tion of leave ex­ten­sion signed by the chair­man of the OAC, but stat­ing that it was from “the board of di­rec­tors of the Bank (cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out the func­tions of the OAC with re­spect to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion…).

“We are un­cer­tain at this stage of the sig­nif­i­cance of this as the OAC is not the board of di­rec­tors and the board of di­rec­tors is not the OAC. The meet­ing on April 162024, was an­oth­er breach of the Bank’s by-laws, the Char­ter and its poli­cies,” the lawyers wrote.

In their let­ter, the lawyers not­ed that the board of gov­er­nors has “nev­er re­spond­ed” to them re­gard­ing “our let­ters of com­plaint about the man­ner in which the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been ini­ti­at­ed, and al­lowed to con­tin­ue.

“Our many let­ters con­sis­tent­ly com­plained that the Bank has breached and is in vi­o­la­tion of its own char­ter, laws, rules, reg­u­la­tions, and poli­cies as re­gards the con­duct of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion per­tain­ing to the elect­ed pres­i­dent”.

They wrote that cen­tral to the com­plaint is that their client ”has on­ly been in­formed of the gen­er­al, bare­bones na­ture of the wide com­plaints lev­elled against him”.

“These com­plaints con­tin­ue to be bare, non­spe­cif­ic, al­le­ga­tions with­out con­de­scend­ing to any par­tic­u­lars of the cir­cum­stances of the com­plaints in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to dates, sub­jects, places or ref­er­ences to the ev­i­dence to sup­port the grave and se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions made against our client”.

The lawyers wrote that the ini­ti­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions “was and con­tin­ues to be in vi­o­la­tion of An­nex 10 of the ICA Pro­ce­dures for Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions, the Code of Con­duct for Di­rec­tors, and Uni­form Prin­ci­ples and Guide­lines for in­ves­ti­ga­tions and many oth­er poli­cies of the Bank and its Char­ter”.

The lawyers said in their view, the con­duct of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been “un­con­ven­tion­al, does not fol­low due process, and does not ad­here to the best prac­tices re­flect­ed in the more es­tab­lished Mul­ti­lat­er­al De­vel­op­ment Banks.

“All of these com­plaints have been ma­li­cious­ly set out in our pre­vi­ous let­ters,” they said, adding “we are there­fore of the opin­ion that the grave pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties fa­tal­ly taint the ini­ti­a­tion and con­tin­u­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ren­der­ing it null and void ab ini­tio”.

The lawyers said that Leon’s “wrong­ful sus­pen­sion” end­ed on April 14 this year and that he en­deav­oured to re­turn to work the fol­low­ing day “de­spite the em­bar­rass­ment of his forced and un­law­ful leave and the hu­mil­i­a­tion of not hav­ing re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion pri­or to the ex­pi­ra­tion of leave.

They said Leon al­so wrote the Di­rec­tor of Hu­man Re­sources to have his ac­cess to the Bank re­stored and to have re­turned to him, his lap top, Ipad and Iphone ”so that he could car­ry out his du­ties as Pres­i­dent.

“We al­so sent a let­ter to the Board of Gov­er­nors sug­gest­ing an or­der­ly process for our client’s re­turn to work, con­se­quent on the ter­mi­na­tion of the “forced” leave and wrong­ful sus­pen­sion im­posed on him.

“Our client re­ceived an email af­ter the end of the work­ing day from the di­rec­tor, hu­man­re­sources, stat­ing that he had no au­thor­i­ty to so act, to re­store our client’s ac­cess to the Bank, and the re­turn of his de­vices”. (CMC)