It is both amazing and amusing how traditional Caribbean politicians can fall in and out of love with foreign investors, according to how the wind blows.
Take the latest claim by one Caribbean leader, in a nation hosting a Sandals property, that Sandals Resorts International (SRI) is simply out to milk money regionally and the region’s flagship global tourism brand is simply a 21st-century brand of Modern Slavery and colonial exploitation.
The claim is that Sandals owes taxes and simply refuses to pay and the plaintiff – a man who knows money – paints SRI with a broad brush as an over-exploitative conglomerate that simply bleeds every island nation it operates in.
Amusingly, that Caribbean leader admits SRI is important to the nation, and calls on SRI to pick up its hotel and take it elsewhere.
Amazingly too, while citing one case out of the nine Caribbean nations and territories where Sandals and Beaches operate over a dozen six-star luxury properties, the plaintiff also claims the group is building an empire off the blood and sweat of Caribbean workers.
The journalist in me, aware of the politics that drive politicians and governments with cash-flow problems and also knowing how praiseworthy this same leader has been of SRI, immediately started trying to read between the lines for the unscripted messages.
But even before I was able to start my search engine, I felt strongly (and still do) that there has to be something hiding somewhere in an empty political pork barrel.
Not that I have figures to verify or to challenge the accuser, but I reject the wild allegation that Sandals is engaging in modern slavery and colonial exploitation everywhere it operates in the Caribbean.
That is more of a claim than a proven fact, especially when one hears what fellow leaders from other Caribbean territories where Sandals operates say about SRI’s operations.
Any regional leader will know that any government that so wishes can shake down any foreign (or local) investor in the name of ‘tax avoidance’ or ‘tax evasion’ (two entirely different things before the law); and anyone familiar with taxes can find arguments to make cases for either, or both.
But sounding like shaking down investors is simply not a good PR strategy and doesn’t attract foreign investors.
As with every other case before the law courts, or the jury of public opinion, this one also has to have an interesting history – and in this case, one that could also have seen the plaintiff and accused engage in earlier exchanges (as between the island’s tax authorities and SRI’s money managers).
The figures quoted by the plaintiff in this case are manageable by SRI standards and deemed necessary by the leader concerned – and such disputes or disagreements are not only normal between investors and tax departments, but always eventually end up in a win-win situation after discussions and good faith negotiations.
This is not the first such outlandish claim by a Caribbean politician against a foreign (in this case Caribbean) investor- and it won’t be the last.
But the blanket claim that SRI engages in modern slavery flies in the face of the experiences with Sandals and Beaches in Barbados, Curacao, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & The Grenadines or Turks and Caicos Islands, where, in most cases, SRI is still the biggest foreign investor and employer in the Caribbean’s hotel and tourism industry.
Isolated temporary disagreements being discussed between tax inspectors and SRI therefore cannot be fairly used to equate Adam Stewart and Butch Stewart’s heirs and successors with the families and companies that benefitted – and still do – from centuries of Chattel Slavery through the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Sandals is in the competitive global tourism and travel business and has faced several sweet and sour challenges, from acknowledgement as the biggest taxpayer in the tourism sector across the region, to a legal challenge to its definition of ‘a couple’.
SRI provides assured incomes for tens of thousands of Caribbean workers and their families– best shown when COVID-19 arrived in 2020 and the Stewart Family kept its hotel doors open and employees paid during the pandemic, while almost every other major operator closed down to save their profits.
Founding Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart simply insisted SRI had to spend to get travel agents to source the visitors to earn from and keep the tourism flag flying across the region.
Adam Stewart, as SRI Executive Chairman, has not only continued in his dad’s footsteps but also taken this unique Caribbean vacation product into the realm of Sandals 2.0 – spending more than ever across the region in a shorter space of time, developing old properties and building new ones, almost annually.
SRI operates with hundreds of administrative staff in a global network that spans the Caribbean and feeds into the rest of the world from Europe to Asia and beyond, but there’s no problem with SRI that can’t be solved through a phone call with Adam Stewart.
Instead, I understand, Stewart read the story like everyone else – as a matter made public by a political leader who smartly claimed he didn’t want this matter to ‘go public’.
Interestingly, I’m not sure Sandals workers will agree to be called ‘slaves’ or to describe SRI as engaging in Modern Slavery or even under-paying workers, especially as, including in the instance under review, Sandals is usually the only tourism entity in the industry to give a wage increase.
Unfortunately, any Caribbean leader will describe SRI as a company only out to make profits and dig out governments’ and taxpayers’ eyes – and the leader pointing fingers is also undoubtedly aware that SRI wasn’t built with slave ships trafficking economically enslaved Caribbean people across the region.
But then, like we tend to always like to say in these parts, in this case like all like-others, there simply had to be more in the mortar than just a pestle – as I would find out.
Indeed, according to my search engine, in his New Year’s Day address of 2023, it was the same leader, as Prime Minister, who boasted that the Sandals hotel in his country was deepening its investment with the expansion of its property in early 2023, employing an additional 300 persons.
If he felt so concerned about Sandals’ labour practices, why such a big boast back then?
Furthermore, if the hotel did indeed ‘pick up its hotel and leave’ (as he’s invited SRI to do), what would happen to the hundreds of persons employed there? Will he immediately hire them?
Will his government match the retirement benefits and medical benefits that they currently enjoy?
But such leaders can only play so much politics with investors and their investments.
This same leader was beating this same horse a few years back, positioning himself as the champion of the common man ahead of the 2017 elections — and not long after he won, the champion suddenly realised that Sandals was the best thing since sliced bread, even trying to woo them to build more hotels.
It is simply history repeating itself — and whatever the intent of the particular Prime Minister, at this particular point in time, he must not continue to seem to think the ‘common man’ is so naive and without common sense as not to think or feel he will once-again change his opinion, based on whether he gets what he’s demanding.
