DR Paul Chen-Young, whose Eagle Group of companies collapsed and was taken over by Finsac in the 1990s financial sector meltdown, is convinced that he was singled out for “vindictive” treatment that, he said, destroyed him and has resulted in him having, at age 73, to start making a living all over again.

“They have destroyed me,” Chen-Young declared Friday in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Observer via telephone from overseas. “It was personal and vindictive. I was selected out for harsh and vindictive treatment, there’s no question about that.”

Chen-Young’s Eagle Group was at the pinnacle of Jamaica’s financial activities in the early 1990s, investing in, and providing loans to numerous established and upcoming businesses.

At the height of its success the group employed 2,000 persons.

But, like many other indigenous financial institutions at the time Chen-Young’s empire came crashing down under the weight of a financial crisis that crippled even the 150-year-old bastion, Mutual Life Assurance company.

Today, the once flourishing banker is eeking out a living in the US, a far cry from the days when he managed tens of millions of dollars through companies in his conglomerate.

According to the former banker, he now has to use “every creative means to raise funds” and help pay his legal bills.

Declining to discuss the details of his economic survival since migrating to the US in 1998, Chen-Young said, however, that borrowing money was one of the things he was forced to do.

“I have been trying to do all sorts of things, nothing definite. I am trying to use whatever I have left to create. It’s been hell,” he said. “I prefer not to discuss that.”

In 1997, as the local economic climate took a toll on businesses, the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) took over his Eagle Group, which, apart from financial outfits, included the Holiday Inn resort in Montego Bay.

The following year, after a forensic audit initiated by the Ministry of Finance, two companies in the group — Eagle Merchant Bank and Crown Eagle Insurance — slapped Chen-Young with a $900-million lawsuit.

He filed an appeal and migrated to the US.

But Friday, Chen-Young was adamant that the then Government could have saved many of the financial institutions that collapsed, including Eagle.

According to Chen-Young, his commercial bank was not insolvent and only Crown Eagle Insurance had problems.

He contended that auditors on behalf of Finsac spoke to all the Eagle directors but ignored him during the forensic audit of the Group.

“I really don’t know why I was singled out, probably Eagle did too well, too fast,” he said when quizzed about probable reasons for him becoming the finance ministry’s target. “I have been an outspoken person. It suited the political directorate to zoom in on me,” he added.

The former banker charged that the then People’s National Party Government was possibly using him as a scapegoat for their failures in managing the economy during the 1990s.

“I would speculate that when the crisis came, and when Government is under pressure to provide all that financial support, then there could be political benefit to look around and to say the problem was caused by mismanagement by certain of the key players. And Chen-Young was certainly in the forefront,” he said. “I think it’s a reasonable and valid speculation.”

Chen-Young, who headed the Government-owned Workers Savings and Loan Bank during the Michael Manley regime in the early 1970s, started his own merchant bank by the end of that decade.

By the turn of the 1990s, with his Eagle Group, he had become a key player in the local financial sector.

Chen-Young, who testified last Thursday at the ongoing Finsac enquiry that there was an effort to discredit him, steered clear Friday of fingering any particular individual. However, he argued that the actions could not have been taken against him without the knowledge of then Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies and Financial Secretary Shirley Tyndall.

According to Chen-Young, after the Eagle 1998 lawsuit and his migration, he revived a dormant company he owned in Florida, but that also came under attack.

“Not only were the lawsuits brought in Jamaica, but after the ruling, the same entities… came to Miami and obtained secret injunction to close a company I was involved with, and filed a personal injunction against me,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Without notifying me or my attorney they got a judgement that the ruling in Jamaica also applied in Miami,” said Chen-Young, who began his financial career with the World Bank in 1966.

“It destroyed my professional career,” he said, adding that after filing an appeal, the Miami Court lifted the injunction until the appeal case in Jamaica was completed. “The [Miami] injunction was lifted by the judge but the damage was already done,” he said. “I have no doubt that the intent was to destroy Paul Chen-Young.”