THE MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR WASTE AT TOURIST BOARD: How One Lone Tourist Board Member Is Fighting For An Audit That Lorne Won't Give

SLTB BOARD MEMBER CALLS FOR AUDIT

WILL THE JAZZ FEST BILLING SCAM BE EXPOSED

Donovan Lorde, the lone gunman of Tourist Board corruption...

 

Forget Donovan Lorde.

There is no hope that any investigation will ever uncover the real truth behind the Donovan Lorde bobol. The evidence for that disappeared into oblivion ages ago.

Donovan Lorde is Lee Harvey Oswald. No matter what, he’s going down alone. Whoever was on that grassy knoll doesn’t exist anymore.

But the multi-million dollar artiste-billing scam could become the hot new controversy if one St Lucia Tourist Board member has his way. The millions that St Lucia has paid BET over the years are stinking to high heaven. Really, this is bigger than Rochamel and took lace under successive governments.

Thank God, at least one person on the Tourist Board wants some honest answers about what the hell kind scam has been running in that place, right under everyone’s noses.

For years, it has been observed (which is far worse than alleged) that the St Lucia Tourist Board pays twice, sometimes three times as much for artistes as they would normally get. For example, last year, BET was paid more than three hundred grand to book Akon, but on the free market, Akon will play for about a hundred-fifty. This year, Maxwell cost one-fifty grand, but on the free market (totally accessible through all the internets you can imagine), Maxwell will play sing you his songs for abut fifty seven grand. US, that is. All of it in US.

Why is BET being paid so much more money than the artistes are worth?

Is it because BET can get artistes that SLTB can’t? Naaa. There are board members and former board members at SLTB who have celebrities and agents numbers like is joke ting you talking deh.

Is it because BET provides us with an invaluable free service, like playing video of our little jazzfest by the sea year round on BET J? Ha! That channel had an existential crisis when BET got sold to the same people who own MTV. In short, it no longer exists. Neither does year round major market media coverage for St Lucia Jazz. So it ain’t the media coverage.

Perhaps it’s because BET, you know…oh please, Jason, stop bullshitting. We can all see what’s going on here. (Spoken in Caron Tobierre’s voice, if you can manage that.)

That one board member has had enough of the bullshit from management too. He wants an audit. Of everything. Goddamit.

I am so relived every time I find out that there is one good man left in the world. I am so relived to read his official communications, not necessarily as he sent them. But I certainly read them the way SLTB head honcho Louis Lewis read them. Or at least received them. As Lewis himself admits, if you don’t have enough money, you can’t possibly be a problem to him.

"Jason Sifflet? Don't make me LOL.

That guy doesn't have enough money to be a problem to me."

 

Unfortunately for Lewis, while the gentleman in question may not have enough money to bother with him, the issue at hand involves millions of dollars from the Tourist Board budget that have been squandered over the years.

In addition, an audit will also expose waste in travel and accommodations for local SLTB honchos who have foreign staff, but insist on traveling every couple of weeks to every little ribbon cutting. A detailed audit might also shed some light on why Tourist Board spends so much money without ever once getting a truly fabulous result. Not once. Ever. In all of oral and written history.

Unfortunately, no amount of forensic investigation will ever discover why Louis Lewis and other honchos flew themselves to Brazil recently to promote St Lucia with pamphlets, booklets and posters, ALL PRINTED IN SPANISH, instead of, you know, Portuguese.

Which is, like, the language of Brazil or something. But the St Lucia Tourist Board didn’t know that. At least, not before they arrived in Brazil, in big style, with forty grand worth of Mexican toilet paper.

Millions will continue to be squandered if the current Tourism Minister maintains his current course of passive participation. Unless of course there’s more to it than that  and there’s something that Lorne Theophilus needs to tell us about his part in the tens of millions in exorbitant fees that Tourist Board paid to BET under Allen Chastanet’s watch, under his watch, under Phillip J Pierre’s watch, under Menissa Rambally’s watch.

And the Lone Ranger on the Tourist Board who wants the audit? Ha! You guessed it.

They want him out. They've wanted him out since day one. In the course of checking this story out, I made sure to make no contact with him. Last thing I need to do is make a good guy's life more difficult but making him part of my poisonous and highly monitored communications record.

How about it, Lorne Theophilus?

Is there something you need to do about this?

Or is there something you need to tell us about your part in this?

Just because he was one of two lawyers who defended Tourist Board's corruption scapegoat  in a crime where the files have mysteriously disappeared and both lawyers are now government ministers while Tourist Board needs an audit that he won't call, doesn't mean that Lorne...?

Oh, wait, maybe it does....

 

You’ve run out of options here, bro. You have been fucking the eggs. This one has festered long enough and now, you’re either going to give this guy on the board the audit he asks for…or we are going to know…about you…

Every second that passes without action makes us trust you less.

Are you one of them or one of us?

Tic, tic, tic…