MP Roseburg supports Ministerial action on GEBE, calls for court inquiry to open company’s “Black Box”

GREAT BAY--Member of Parliament Sjamira D.M. Roseburg, LL.M., has welcomed the steps being taken by the Ministries of TEATT and VROMI to strengthen oversight of NV GEBE, including the recently published decree granting Bureau Telecommunicatie en Post, BTP, a new oversight role. At the same time, she is calling on the Council of Ministers, as representative of government’s 100 percent shareholding in GEBE, to take the next critical step by petitioning the Common Court of Justice to open a corporate inquiry procedure, known as an enquêteprocedure, into the utility company.

MP Roseburg recently submitted a formal advisory letter to the Council of Ministers urging government to initiate the judicial procedure without delay. She said the regulatory measures now being implemented are important, but must be accompanied by a court-led inquiry that can examine the company’s deeper administrative, financial and governance failures.

According to Roseburg, the inquiry procedure is needed to establish the current condition of GEBE, examine years of limited transparency and accountability, and determine where responsibility lies.

“The Court Inquiry is seeing the current status and the lack of transparency and accountability much needed. The procedure opens the black box of the past years to see where it went wrong and who is to be held responsible, with the goal to permanently clean up the corporate foundation,” Roseburg said.

She said GEBE has not met its statutory obligation to maintain proper administration or file audited financial statements on time. This, she said, has created a structural administrative gap that requires more than political discussion or regulatory adjustment.

Roseburg said the inquiry would provide an independent judicial mechanism to examine why the billing system is still failing, how the fuel clause was calculated, whether that calculation was fair, and how consumers were left for so long without full clarity on matters that directly affect their households and businesses.

She stressed that the purpose of the inquiry is not political blame, but truth-finding.

“The administration does not lie and the books must speak for themselves,” Roseburg said.

The MP said the current condition of GEBE is the result of years of neglect and that the public deserves a full, structured and transparent examination of how the company reached this point.

Roseburg explained that under Caribbean corporate law, only a select group has the legal standing to request such an inquiry. The shareholder, the corporate boards, or the Public Prosecutor may file the request with the Court. Individual citizens and Parliament do not have standing to do so.

That, she said, places the responsibility directly on the government as the sole shareholder of NV GEBE.

Roseburg warned that if the Council of Ministers fails to act, St. Maarten risks repeating the same mistake made in the 2017 Harbor case. In that situation, she said, government remained passive as shareholder, after which the Public Prosecutor stepped in on public interest grounds and forced an inquiry. The result, according to Roseburg, was that government was effectively sidelined in its own company.

“We must absolutely prevent a repeat of the Harbor scenario,” Roseburg said. “It is constitutionally, democratically, and administratively far cleaner if the government takes responsibility and requests this investigation itself.”

The MP also pointed to the example of Aqualectra in Curaçao. She said that when the utility company faced severe financial distress linked to past mismanagement, the Curaçao government acted in its capacity as shareholder, worked with stakeholders, and launched the inquiry itself. According to Roseburg, that approach allowed the government to maintain control of the process while using the inquiry to clean up the utility.

She said St. Maarten should learn from both examples. In Curaçao, the shareholder acted and remained in control. In the Harbor case, the shareholder failed to act and the Public Prosecutor took the lead.

Roseburg said that distinction is important because GEBE is not only a company, but a critical public utility that affects the daily lives of residents and businesses. She said restoring public confidence requires a process that is independent, legally sound and capable of identifying what went wrong.

The MP further noted that the consequences of a court inquiry can be serious if manifest mismanagement is established. Under the Civil Code, former and current executives, including past CEOs, COOs, CFOs and supervisory board members, may face personal liability in their private assets if they caused or enabled the financial and administrative breakdown.

Roseburg emphasized that the new BTP oversight is a positive step and that she fully commends the efforts of the responsible Ministers in advancing the decree. However, she said BTP oversight addresses future regulatory supervision, while the court inquiry is needed to examine the past and current structural failures within the company.

She said both tracks should move forward together: regulatory oversight to strengthen the framework going forward, and a judicial inquiry to uncover the facts, identify responsibility and support a permanent cleanup of GEBE’s corporate foundation.

MP Roseburg is now awaiting a formal written response from the Council of Ministers regarding its willingness to submit the petition to the Common Court of Justice.

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