Introduction
If NICIL – the National Industrial & Commercial Investments Limited – was a play, it would be one that challenges Othello and King Lear for the dubious distinction of saddest tragedy ever written. And this is how the dramatis personae would be introduced:
Chairman of the Board: Dr Ashni Singh has the distinction of reporting to himself; credit for the undermining of the last vestiges of confidence in public accounting; lead authority on the use and mostly abuse of the Consolidated Fund and its offspring the Contingencies Fund; and credit for the largest financial sector failure under his watch;
Director: Dr Roger Luncheon, who thinks running a government and country is an opportunity to display verbosity and jest; who has merrily led the country’s National Insurance Scheme to the brink of the cliff and then casually denies reality; and who cannot distinguish a government company from a private company;
Executive director: Winston Brassington, who has been the architect or centre of almost every concoction or government initiative in the past fifteen years – the Queens Atlantic Investment Inc and its illegal tax holidays (later accepting the assignment to teach a private sector icon about the country’s tax laws); railroading the most costly financial package in setting up the
