Wishful thinking and desperate Hail Marys won’t make Grynberg go away!

Earlier this week one of the more persistent species of Pthirus pubis—look it up!—deposited in a particularly hirsute corner of the Internet a few drops of contaminated goo, without which the parasitic FB inhabitants would perish: “When you see the 43 percenters all happy about Grynberg, just ask them what exactly are they happy about. Meanwhile Rick Wayne is so excited that his viewersheep will rise to at least 500/600 this Thursday. Well, not if Claudius J. Francis enlightens the nation before Rick does. Anywho, here’s a sneak peek. Ah la Grynberg: 1) All the ruling states is the tribunal had the authority to impose security costs. 2) The tribunal had the authority to discontinue the case because the costs were not paid. 3) Notwithstanding, it should not have done so ‘with prejudice’ as the case itself had never been heard. 4) That the case may, not must, be reopened but only upon Grynberg paying two thirds of the cost earlier set by the tribunal, with the other one third paid by the government.”

Even though I admit to being more than a teeny bit impressed with that “viewersheep” concoction (probably ‘play-gee-arized!’) still most of the above quoted is stale fish carried over from my article on Jack Grynberg’s successful recent appeal and retooled for Facebook, where the prevailing mindset is why bother to get things right when half right will serve just as well!

Actually, what I reported last week was that the ICSID’s ad hoc committee had restored to Jack Grynberg his right to have his lawsuit heard on the merits, a right that the ICSID tribunal had earlier taken away from him.

What really arrested my curiosity, however, was this wholly unexpected line: “With Grynberg’s aversion to paying in the first place, the tribunal may never recommence!” Oh yes indeed, the mother of all Hail Marys—that Grynberg might abruptly decide no longer to pursue his decade-long ambition to squeeze out of Saint Lucia damages totaling US$500 million, about half this island’s GDP, because he is notoriously tightfisted. That’s a little bit like stepping into a zoo lion’s cage shortly after feeding time, convinced you’ll walk out again because you read somewhere on the Internet that lions don’t normally snack between meals!

The reasonable reader, that is to say, who reads other than the insane anonymous jottings reproduced in our opening paragraph, might ask: If the notorious Grynberg is too cheap, or too crooked and arrogant to pay court ordered bills, then why didn’t he simply walk away from his lawsuit in July 2016, after the tribunal dismissed it with prejudice? Why did he risk incurring further expense by challenging the tribunal’s decision before the ICSID’s ad hoc committee? 

More questions abegging to be answered: Why did Kenny Anthony sign three agreements with a foreigner of ill repute including a universally publicized “aversion to paying” his bills? But the Facebook spirochettes here cited have little interest in such questions. Why did Kenny Anthony see the need to keep even from his Cabinet colleagues and the governor general the surreptitious arrangement with Grynberg, whose sordid business history is easily accessible via the Internet? If he’d been less secretive—or gave a hoot about due diligence—Kenny Anthony might’ve learned quite a lot about Jack Grynberg from the Grenada government, at the time confronted by an unconscionable Grynberg lawsuit.

I say Kenny Anthony could’ve researched Grynberg, but then I have no way of knowing he did not. He may well have looked up the oil speculator and decided, risks be damned, to jump into that lion’s den. Then again it occurs to me that someone sworn to look after our nation’s best interests would not go out of his way to place in the hands of a notorious scoundrel eight million acres of Saint Lucia’s seabed, then instruct a disciple to keep related details to himself.

The chosen one was of course Earl Huntley. By his own published account, he it was who had divined while cavorting with a female fellow swimmer the oily secret under the sea at Dauphin. He who had headhunted Jack Grynberg, with a little help from another female friend well placed at Saint Lucia’s Washington D.C. embassy. Huntley had also delivered the notorious Colorado oilman into the hapless hands of Saint Lucia’s prime minister—or was it the other way around, that Huntley delivered a local patsy to be skinned alive by an internationally famous voracious scalper? This is the same Earl Huntley who, as Saint Lucia’s U.N. ambassador, illicitly transferred ownership of a multi-million-dollar government of Saint Lucia building to a friend, to be used as collateral in a dubious arrangement involving a New York loan shark—all of that ostensibly without the knowledge of his prime minister Kenny Anthony.

In his own defense (perhaps hubris was at the root of it) the career civil servant Huntley explained to the commissioner at a subsequent inquiry that he thought his job afforded him the authority to do as he pleased with the Saint Lucia government’s real estate. “If that were the case,” retorted the handpicked commissioner, a retired court of appeal justice, “it would mean you had the authority also to sell all of Saint Lucia to some Arab money launderer without a word to your prime minister!”  Or something to that effect!

In his submitted report at the conclusion of his assignment the commissioner acknowledged Huntley had egregiously abused his office but did not directly profit from the exercise. Which was like saying a robber who at gunpoint emptied the vaults of Bank of St. Lucia then handed over his loot to a police charity, should not be prosecuted as a thief since he had not personally profited from the heist. In other words, robbing banks is fine so long as you don’t spend the money on yourself! 

As has been reported over at least eleven years, Kenny Anthony has never given an official account of his introduction and subsequent dealings with Jack Grynberg. In 2018 the current prime minister announced in parliament his intention to initiate an investigation into the Grynberg matter that was costing taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees. An angry Kenny Anthony reacted with an ominous warning that should the prime minister actually move forward with his plan, Anthony would “make sure you reap the whirlwind.” 

And now, with the ICSID’s ad hoc committee’s recent ruling confronting the country, more millions will have to be found to pay defense lawyers for lord knows how much longer. Still Kenny Anthony maintains his silence. Ah, but his feckless hacks and Facebook bugs are busy crawling out of the woodwork in a united, desperately misguided effort at convincing themselves that Jack Grynberg will prove too cheap to pursue the hardly remote possibility of finally winning his 10-year-old US$500 million breach of contract lawsuit against the largely uninformed people of this shortsighted and abused nation.