Reports of dire problems at the Guyana National Cooperative Bank (GNCB) formed the basis of a cable on May 9th, 1978 from the US Embassy here to the State Department and missions in the Caribbean.
Released on the Wikileaks website, the cable said that GNCB appeared to be in the throes of a serious financial crisis and there were concerns that fallout from it could implicate senior members of the PNC and government officials.
GNCB encountered severe crises with bad debts in the early 1980s and this continued into the 1990s. Its customers’ accounts were eventually acquired by the then National Bank of Industry of Commerce (now Republic Bank (Guyana) Inc) in 2003 while its bad debts portfolio was hived off to a collections-type agency. The bank no longer exists in any form.
The cable noted that GNCB’s annual general meeting for 1978 was suddenly postponed for a month with only two days’ notice. It said that the next day, Saturday, April 29, the Minister of Finance Frank Hope met with the bank’s senior staff and announced the sudden resignation of the bank’s general manager.
The cable said that following this meeting, Hope voiced hope that the senior management of GNCB was capable of running the affairs of the bank efficiently. The cable said that despite Hope’s “calming” statement, the Deputy General Manager resigned three days later.
Following this, the cable said rumours circulated widely that the bank had been involved in illegal transfers abroad. The cable said it was reported in Georgetown that charges of malfeasance were possible. The cable said that other reports however suggested that the extent of corruption was such that the Government of Guyana would not indict the bank’s officers for fear that any formal investigation would expose highly placed PNC and government officials.
The cable said that the embassy would attempt to gather more information even though “hard fact will obviously not be easy to come by”. It added that if the rumours were true, the public disclosure of serious irregularities at GNCB could send shock waves through “this already shaky economy”.
