Curacao

Central Banks Intervenes: Ennia Placed Under Guardianship

gebouw Ennia-Curacao-456x300

The Guardianship imposed will enable CBCS to restructure the company and restore solvency.

Willemstad- The Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS) has intervened and requested permission at the Court of First Instance in Curaçao to place Ennia Caribe under guardianship with immediate effect. The Bank is very concerned about the solvency of the insurance company. The Bank’s concerns are not new. Earlier, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) had also expressed great concern about the solvency of the company, which also manages a large amount in pensions. However, DNB could only play a side role via the Ennia branch on Bonaire. As the head office of Ennia is located in Curaçao, CBCS is the official supervisor.

CBCS initially seemed a bit more lenient than DNB, but now apparently felt compelled to intervene with the drastic measure. This afternoon, the regulator obtained permission from the Court in Curaçao to declare the emergency regulations applicable to Ennia and various subsidiaries of the company.

According to CBCS, intervention is the only way to prevent Ennia’s solvency from deteriorating any further. As DNB had also pointed out earlier, it is a conglomerate of companies that can all be traced back to major shareholder Ansari. Through Ennia’s affiliated companies, at least $ 1.5 billion in insurance and pension money would have been channeled away. In addition, that bank asserted that there was a recent attempt to transfer an additional 100 million dollars from an Ennia securities account to another entity in the group of companies, on which CBCS would not have had any control.

The CBCS measure is, according to the documents in the court case, also prompted by the size of Ennia and related companies on the islands of the former Netherlands Antilles. According to CBCS, Ennia holds about 50% of the insurance market on both Curaçao and St. Maarten and would even hold as much as 80% of the pension market.

Ennia and their lawyers still tried to protest against the emergency measure, but these attempts turned out in vain. According to an issued press release, “The Central Bank is hereby given the opportunity to restructure Ennia and to improve the solvency of the Company.

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