#BTColumn - Investment and renewable energy barbadostoday.bb - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from barbadostoday.bb Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The fallout from the gigantic fraud at the Jamaican investment firm Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) that wiped out more than US$12 million (BDS$24 million) from global athletics icon Usain Bolt, is still occurring.
The investment firm, which touts a corporate slogan of “Experience Financial Freedom, with SSL”, is now reeling from this scandal.
The mind-boggling fraud has cast a pall over
The leadership of the local credit union movement must certainly be wondering why such an extensive section of the Barbadian public remains exposed and unprotected from the vagaries of operating in the local financial system.Credit unions in this country hold the deposits of more than 200 000 Barbadians. That represents an enormous portion of our population, across all demographics and economic stations.For the most part, however, the near $3 billion held by credit unions in this country are the hard-earned savings of ordinary men and women from working class homes. They are confident that credit unions are operating in their interest more so than other financial institutions and they place their savings there.Credit unions had their genesis here in the 1940s as savings societies and cooperatives, built on the philosophy of self-help.In fact, it was a group of low-income earners and members of the St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church who formed a savings union in 1947, which was kno