Last week Tues­day, the Busi­ness Guardian sent the chair­man and two ex­ec­u­tives of the lo­cal ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank First Cit­i­zens six ques­tions re­lat­ing to its re­la­tion­ship with the Ja­maican com­pa­ny, Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and its pub­lic sub­sidiary, Bari­ta In­vest­ments Ltd.

The re­spons­es to those ques­tions were meant to be part of an ar­ti­cle in last Thurs­day’s pub­li­ca­tion, which was head­lined First Cit­i­zens mon­i­tor­ing Cor­ner­stone/Bari­ta out­look.

The ar­ti­cle ref­er­enced the fact that First Cit­i­zens had ex­tend­ed three loan fa­cil­i­ties to Cor­ner­stone, which is a pri­vate, close­ly held com­pa­ny, to­talling US$60 mil­lion. Those loans are se­cured by shares in Bari­ta In­vest­ments, which are held by Cor­ner­stone. The ar­ti­cle al­so re­port­ed that First Cit­i­zens is the sec­ond largest share­hold­er of Bari­ta In­vest­ments.

The re­spons­es to those ques­tions came af­ter the press cut­off time for the pub­li­ca­tion of the mag­a­zine. As a re­sult, the Busi­ness Guardian is pub­lish­ing the ques­tions and the re­spons­es from First Cit­i­zens cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Lin­di Bal­lah-Tull.