Pamela Gordon-Carty
~ Minister’s attorney says issue stems from former employment ~
PHILIPSBURG--Minister of Public Health, Labour and Social Affairs VSA Pamela Gordon-Carty seems to be facing more financial troubles after a lien was placed on her ministerial salary for monies owed to Guy Estate NV.
Attorney Melinda Hoeve confirmed to The Daily Herald on Wednesday that a lien had been placed on the Minister’s salary on Monday on behalf of her client Guy Estate NV.
The minister’s attorney said in an invited comment, “The issue at hand stems from her (Gordon-Carty’s) former employment, which she has relinquished all ties to in order to take up her role as minister.” The attorney said up Wednesday afternoon no lien had been placed on the minister’s “accounts,” but he did not indicate whether one had been placed on her ministerial “salary,” which was where the lien was placed.
News of the lien comes just days after the minister paid off all outstanding amounts in court fees related to a cheque deposited on the third-party account of BZSE Attorneys at Law in Cay Hill, that bounced. One day after she was sworn in on Thursday, November 28, the brand-new minister ran into trouble after depositing the cheque, which later bounced.
Commenting on the matter during the Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday, Gordon-Carty said this is a personal matter and alleged that there seems to be a smear campaign against her during the election season.
“While trying to focus on the work that needs to get done, I was confronted with two personal matters that were highlighted in the media. I am a professional accountant for 14 years running my business in St. Maarten and in Aruba and Curaçao and it is unfortunate that the media are using the media to publish one-sided stories and rumours that are not founded and I find that my name should not be smeared or dragged in all of this when a political campaign is taking place,” Gordon-Carty said in her opening remarks.
It should be noted that the minister was approached on Monday via her public relations representative for a comment on the matter of the bounced cheque, but she declined to comment to this newspaper “at this time.”
“I find that basically there is a campaign being launched against people who are trying to run a country. It’s not only me. In the past we have seen that other people have been targeted and things are being said and no corrections are being done. My personal opinion about this is that basically I am not going to comment further, to give no one no type of satisfaction about this. It’s a personal matter and [my – Ed.] legal [representative] will deal with it further,” the minister said during the press briefing.
She explained the matter of the cheque. “It’s a personal matter, but as a business I think all businesspeople know that in transactions, a lot of things happen. To take the capture of the heading that stated “unsecured cheque” – in business you have to do transfers from one account to another, from overseas to local, things do happen. It can take a second that a cheque hit and is gone back. Cheques bounce for even a dollar. That doesn’t mean that the cheque was unsecured.”
She added that the matter at hand does not have anything to do with her ministry or her capacity to exercise her duty as a VSA minister.
The cheque payment was in connection with a verdict by the Court of Appeals of November 15, 2019, under which Gordon-Carty in her then-capacity of accountant and entrepreneur at Master Accounting Service (MAS) was ordered to pay the cost of the legal procedure, which was set at NAf. 6,272.50.
In a separate case, in which the Court of First Instance ruled on May 19, 2017, Gordon-Carty and her partner were ordered to pay NAf. 2,283.50 in legal fees. The BZSE law firm itself had also sent an invoice to Gordon-Carty to the amount of US $108.32.
The details of the matter related to the lien placed on her salary on Monday could not be ascertained up to press time.
