There was a professional working relationship between my Department and senior management of IBRC at all times. Given the issues which the bank was dealing with at the time, this may not have always led to agreement on certain matters between my Department and senior management of IBRC, nor should this be expected. I would expect healthy debate on such matters between the parties involved and expect they would have asked difficult questions of each other during their interactions given the importance of the decisions being made.
We should expect professionals to challenge, debate and sometimes disagree with each other and not shy away from having difficult discussions in pursuing and justifying what they believe to be the best course of action in whatever issue they are addressing.
The decision to liquidate IBRC and exchange the Promissory Notes was taken with the expressed purpose of protecting the taxpayer, to end the exposure of the State and the Central Bank to IBRC, to enable the state to re-establish normalised access to the international debt markets, to resolve the debt of IBRC to the Central Bank, to restore confidence in the banking sector more generally and to provide for the orderly wind down of IBRC which was being supported, at a heavy cost to the State, by the Promissory Notes.
The relationship with the management of IBRC was not a contributory factor, nor the decision making process surrounding the formulation, design and structuring of the Promissory Note transaction and liquidation of IBRC.
