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CRIME in the VI!

- Are we teaching how?
Donald E. de Castro. Photo: VINO/File
By Donald E. de Castro- “too old to be intimidated”

Theft is the taking of another person’s property without their permission or consent with intent to deprive them of it. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting, and fraud. These are all crimes and when one encourages and assists another in committing these acts that is also a crime. As the saying goes, “the harbourer is just as bad as the thief”.

As we have been taught all through the years and we continue to teach all those that follow us, it is wrong to steal and that there is no difference between stealing an egg and stealing a cow, they are both stealing. But we have seen all over the world and here in the Virgin Islands some people are punished more for smoking a joint of marijuana than murder.

I grew up accepting this Territory to be a Christian community and at that time we only had the Methodist, Anglican and Seventh Day Adventist churches. Today we seem to have more churches than people yet the territory is heading to hell so fast it is difficult to understand why.

If the question is why then we must search carefully in every area for the answer. We can start in the home, the school, the churches and the political system. We are all aware that many parents do the best they can; the schools have room for improvements and the churches are teaching their members the word of God as they interpret it. With all of this, dishonesty and greed have taken over. Pride, morals, ethics and respect are now things of the past.

In the early days when we started developing politically we had honest people that had this Territory at heart but once they were gone the newcomers became aware of how power and position could benefit them, their friends, their cronies and those willing to pay bribes. The rest is history.

One of my major concerns is the amount of secrecy laws in this Territory. These laws are disastrous to the people and this Territory in general. Let me give u examples. If damage was caused to an individual or property by a vehicle and all you had was a licence plate number and you reported this to the police, the police would have to submit a request to the Department of Motor Vehicles in writing for the name and address of the vehicle’s owner. The DMV may or may not supply such information.

Another situation is that you cannot go the Registry of Companies and find out who owns any company here in the Virgin Islands. So with all the businesses registered here not even the government knows who the principal shareholders are. For example; as to this day no one is able to find out who are the shareholders of the Tortola Pier Partners. Another example: When the present Government was first elected they promised government in the sunshine and they passed a law called Registry of Interest, which requires all elected members to register their financial interests, however, all this information is private, so if any of these people are shareholders in Bi-Water, Ocean Conversion, Tortola Pier Partners or any other business in or outside the Virgin Islands we will never know because neither the Registry of Interest or the Registry of Companies will release this information.

Now that someone, for whatever reason, leaked the financial services files, the people of this Territory are now aware of how one country has been conspiring for years with nationals of other countries to steal from their countries. This is a contrast to what is done to our own people when they are unable to pay their taxes, not because they don’t want to but because they are financially unable to do so. However, it seems that only the deceptive, greedy and dishonest ones are totally upset over the leak.

Let this awakening by this leak remind us that whatever takes place in the dark one day will come to the light. Now we will pay for this and it will not be the ones that perpetrated the conspiracy but the poor man and woman of this Territory. I pray and hope that the UK takes the appropriate action, for I am sure that they have lost billions of dollars in taxes as well as the United States and other countries. Now we are all aware of what the Vicious Insensitive People and the Notorious Deceptive People have been doing to us over the years. Yet no one in the Virgin Islands has gone to prison as yet. This may be the issue for the UK to set up a Commission of Inquiry going back forty years.

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