Bridgetown.
Chief Exceutive Officer Steve Bell of City of Bridgetown Co-operative Credit Union (COB), is maintaining that the Financial Services Commission (FSC) wants it and other credit unions to remove millions of dollars deposited in financial institutions and shift them to banks.
According to Belle, the FSC had instructed COB to prepare a plan to remove the credit union’s deposits from non-bank financial institutions and put them in banks as the law strictly states and there were documents to support his contention.
Belle told the media COB had placed deposits in First Citizen Investment Services, Signia Financial, Capita Financial and Consolidated Finance, all of which were reputable non-bank financial institutions regulated by the Central Bank of Barbados that usually paid better returns on investments than commercial banks. He said it also had investments in Government bonds.
His statements contradicted a statement on Wednesday evening from the Barbados Co-operative Credit Union League which denied that the movement had been given any such directive by the FSC.
The League said in a press release :"In relation to the subject of investments, the FSC directed credit unions to report on their portfolio of investments, as at April 15, 2013. However it noted that some provision in the current legislations overning investment In their strictest literal interpretation may be restrictive the canging financial landscape".
