For­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), Hy­gi­nus “Gene” Leon is threat­en­ing to sue the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion if he does not hear from it by May 4 “to ne­go­ti­ate an am­i­ca­ble sep­a­ra­tion.”

In a le­gal let­ter dat­ed April 21, in which he an­nounced his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion, Leon ac­cused the CDB of con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of him that was un­con­ven­tion­al, did not fol­low due process and was be­set with “grave pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” that fa­tal­ly taint­ed it.

“The cir­cum­stances of this mat­ter, ar­tic­u­lat­ed here and in our pre­vi­ous let­ters, amount to a con­struc­tive dis­missal of our clients and should we not hear from you by May 4, 2024 to ne­go­ti­ate an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment, please take this let­ter as our client’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to move the court in Bar­ba­dos or any oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion more ap­pro­pri­ate, to en­force our client’s le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” ac­cord­ing to the le­gal let­ter.

In the three-page let­ter sent to the CDB by his St Lu­cia-based lawyers, Leon said it is his opin­ion that “he will nev­er be treat­ed fair­ly” af­ter he had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave in Jan­u­ary.

“It is al­so ev­i­dent that the Bank has lost all trust and con­fi­dence in our client by the fail­ure of the board of gov­er­nors to pre­vent the con­tin­ued vi­o­la­tions of its char­ter, poli­cies, rules and reg­u­la­tions with re­gard to its elect­ed Pres­i­dent.”

In Jan­u­ary it was dis­closed that Dr Leon, had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave un­til April this year, as “an on­go­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive process” con­tin­ued at the re­gion’s pre­mier fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

The CDB has re­mained mum on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­ci­sion to send the St Lu­cian-born econ­o­mist on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, with the act­ing pres­i­dent Isaac Solomon, con­firm­ing at a bank news con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary that “there is an in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive process in­volv­ing the pres­i­dent."

In their let­ter, the lawyers wrote that “On April 16,2024, 40 hours af­ter our client’s leave ex­pired, our client re­ceived a let­ter of no­ti­fi­ca­tion of leave ex­ten­sion signed by the chair­man of the OAC, but stat­ing that it was from “the Board of Di­rec­tors of the Bank (cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out the func­tions of the OAC with re­spect to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion …).

“We are un­cer­tain at this stage of the sig­nif­i­cance of this as the OAC is not the Board of Di­rec­tors and the Board of Di­rec­tors is not the OAC. The meet­ing on the 16th of April 2024, was an­oth­er breach of the Bank’s by-laws, the Char­ter and its poli­cies,” the lawyers wrote.

In their let­ter, the lawyers not­ed that the Board of Gov­er­nors has “nev­er re­spond­ed” to them re­gard­ing “our let­ters of com­plaint about the man­ner in which the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been ini­ti­at­ed, and al­lowed to con­tin­ue.

“Our many let­ters con­sis­tent­ly com­plained that the Bank has breached and is in vi­o­la­tion of its own char­ter, laws, rules, reg­u­la­tions, and poli­cies as re­gards the con­duct of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion per­tain­ing to the elect­ed pres­i­dent”.

They wrote that cen­tral to the com­plaint is that their client “has on­ly been in­formed of the gen­er­al, bare­bones na­ture of the wide com­plaints lev­elled against him”.

“These com­plaints con­tin­ue to be bare, non­spe­cif­ic, al­le­ga­tions with­out con­de­scend­ing to any par­tic­u­lars of the cir­cum­stances of the com­plaints in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to dates, sub­jects, places or ref­er­ences to the ev­i­dence to sup­port the grave and se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions made against our client.”

The lawyers wrote that the ini­ti­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions “was and con­tin­ues to be in vi­o­la­tion of An­nex 10 of the ICA Pro­ce­dures for Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions, the Code of Con­duct for Di­rec­tors, and Uni­form Prin­ci­ples and Guide­lines for in­ves­ti­ga­tions and many oth­er poli­cies of the Bank and its Char­ter”.

The lawyers said in their view, the con­duct of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been “un­con­ven­tion­al, does not fol­low due process, and does not ad­here to the best prac­tices re­flect­ed in the more es­tab­lished Mul­ti­lat­er­al De­vel­op­ment Banks.

“All of these com­plaints have been metic­u­lous­ly set out in our pre­vi­ous let­ters,” they said, adding “we are there­fore of the opin­ion that the grave pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties fa­tal­ly taint the ini­ti­a­tion and con­tin­u­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ren­der­ing it null and void ab ini­tio”.

The lawyers said that Leon’s “wrong­ful sus­pen­sion” end­ed on April 14 this year and that he en­deav­oured to re­turn to work the fol­low­ing day “de­spite the em­bar­rass­ment of his forced and un­law­ful leave and the hu­mil­i­a­tion of not hav­ing re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion pri­or to the ex­pi­ra­tion of leave.” (with files from CMC)