FORMER building contractor Milton Baker, testifying at yesterday’s sitting of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) enquiry, called on the commissioners to ensure that actions — which he claimed resulted in the deaths of many local businessmen — never again occur.

Baker at the same challenged the legality of the Jamaica Redevelopment Foundation (JRF), a US-based company that sold assets siezed from debtors after the 1990s financial collapse.

“My children and my children’s children and the many debtors in this land that have been destroyed need to have this fixed so that this travesty that has befallen the land does not happen again,” Baker declared to applause from sections of the gallery.

“What I need is for the commission to find out [what happened] so it does not happen again,” he said.

Baker told the enquiry that he borrowed a total $10.9 million from Mutual Security Bank (MSB) in 1993, repaid $41.5 million by 1997, in addition sold two properties to cover the mounting debt, and still owed $70 million to JRF in 2008 after the loan was transferred to the company.

He said that between August 1997 and March 2002 an additional $7.3 million was paid from the sale of two properties and the encashment of his insurance policy. JRF took over the loan portfolio in 2002.

According to Baker, JRF sold his St Andrew family home for $19.5 million without his knowledge in 2008 and later informed him that he still owed the agency a balance of $70 million.

Represented by attorney-at-law David Wong-Ken, Baker presented documents to show that his account was being serviced when it was handed over to FINSAC by National Commercial Bank, which had acquired the assets of MSB.

FINSAC, formed by then finance minister Dr Omar Davies, in turn sold the non-performing loan portfolio at a highly discounted rate to JRF, formerly Dennis Joslin Jamaica.

Baker said that interest rates for the loans charged by the banks up to 1997 skyrocketed as high as 120 per cent, forcing many of his clients to renege on payments, but he was of the impression that JRF would seek to collect only the principal after they bought the loan portfolio from Government.

Efforts to get a statement of his account from JRF were futile, Baker told the enquiry.

He contended that the charging of interest by debt collection companies was illegal and could not occur in the US, where the JRF’s head office is located.

“In the US, JRF could not charge interest to any debtors account turned over to them for collection,” Baker said, making it clear that he was so advised by US lawyers. “It would be illegal there and I believe it is illegal here in Jamaica,” he told the enquiry being held at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.

The former building contractor, emphasising that he was not seeking redress from Government, made an impassioned plea for activities leading to the 1990s financial meltdown and the activities of Government and its agents be made public so they never recur.

“I do not expect to get anything back from the Government, from the commissioner, I have given up all of that,” he said.

“I am trying to get on with my life and maintain my sanity… a lot of my friends have gone, a lot of my friends have died because of this stress that has been inflicted on them because of the behaviour of the Government of this land,” said Baker as visitors voiced their approval to the disgust of Commissioner Worrick Bogle.