May 07 - GSD Highlights Inconsistencies Between Chief Secretary’s Statement And Parliament Answers
The GSD has said that it comes as a surprise to learn that the Chief Secretary should say that any movement of monies from Credit Finance Company Limited to Gibraltar Investment (Holdings) Limited took place two years earlier than October 2014.
The Leader of the Opposition has today written to the Chief Secretary informing him that this does not accord with answers that have been provided by Government to the Opposition in Parliament and asking him to further clarify the position.
The Opposition argues that it was only in January of this year that Minister Bossano told Parliament that the purpose of this transfer was to fund the cash flow requirements of Government owned companies (i.e. their operating costs, including employee wages and projects). That, according to the party, “distorts the public finances” because it is expenditure that would otherwise have had to be funded directly by Government. In other words, the GSD argues, the Government is using savers’ money from the Gibraltar Savings Bank to fund its own expenditure, “making its own accounts look much better than they really are.”
That the Opposition should be told in May 2015 that Credit Finance Company Limited had made a transfer of hundreds of millions of pounds to Gibraltar Investment (Holdings) Limited in October 2012 is “surprising” says the GSD adding that the only purpose of this transfer was to “supplement Government expenditure on a grand scale behind Parliament’s back and without Parliament’s knowledge, with the huge implications for the public finances of this community.”
A statement from the party ended: “It is hoped that the Chief Secretary can enlighten the general public and the Opposition after he has had an opportunity to read the letter from the Leader of the Opposition.”
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