FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS are being warned not to be defrauded of thousands of dollars by island-hopping business criminals. Acting chief executive officer of the Caribbean Credit Bureau, Bianca Williams said investigations by her company had found evidence of "professional company openers" who were entering different islands and setting up businesses just long enough to amass significant amounts of debt before skipping the country, leaving thousands in unpaid bills. "As the only regional credit bureau, we have seen a trend toward professional company openers in several islands and what we've seen is that the debt-to-bad-debt ratio is on an increase and it is a significant enough increase to say enough is enough," Williams said as she explained to the Press the reasons behind a regional one-day seminar organised by Caribbean Credit Bureau at Blue Horizon Hotel in Rockley, Christ Church, last Tuesday. "At this stage, from what we've seen from our research, they're mainly defrauding the financial institutions because they are the ones who are giving the capital to set up these companies. "At the smaller level, we also have the consumers, who actually do business with them but then do not get their due recourse [once the companies leave the island] for the services they would have paid for," she noted. (CH)
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