By Samantha Simon
Members of the Fishermen’s Co-operative Society (FCS) turned out yesterday to reclaim access to their headquarters on North Street after a successful ruling in the High Court on December 12.
Access to the building, equipment and other materials were allegedly denied to the members and executive of the FCS by the previous executive board who had not vacated their seats at the end of their tenure in July 2017.
Members of the society, along with their current President, Sir Dr Anderson Roberts, and General Secretary, Garry Gore, went to meet with a representative of former President, Leonard Mussington, to have access to the property and a vehicle owned by the FCS transferred.
After approaching the representative, they were informed that the keys were not in his possession. The society members then proceeded to enter the building via a window and deactivated the security alarm that had been installed.
They then proceeded to cut away a padlock that kept them from entering an inner office to gain full access to the facilities.
After completing their checks of the facility and changing the locks, they proceeded to attempt to access their storage space but were informed that they could not access it as the building it was housed in was allegedly under the management of Prime Minister Gaston Brown.
When asked what caused the matter to escalate to court, the General Secretary explained that the previous executive allegedly refused to relinquish control of the FCS after their tenure ended.
Furthermore, Mussington was found to have been elected to the board of the Antigua Fisheries Ltd (AFL), which was a direct violation of FCS’s constitution, according to court documents that Observer has seen. It was also speculated that there was a misappropriation of society funds by the executive.
Upon further investigation, on April 23 2017 it was decided that both Mussington and the then treasurer, Lyndon Greene, were removed from the society’s membership.
Despite being removed from the FCS’s membership, Mussington and Greene along with other executives refused to relinquish their roles.
Matters came to a head in November 2017 after a special general meeting was called, with the 2014 board being removed and subsequently replaced by a new board after a full evaluation of their violations of the constitution.
After multiple court proceedings between the two parties, including repeated appeals by the former executive that all ended in favour of the current executive, the court finally ruled that Mussington and his associates had no grounds to pursue the matter further as they were no longer members of the society.
Despite this win, members of the society fear further retaliation in the form of malicious destruction of the current headquarters to cover up potential evidence of the speculated misappropriation of assets.
Attempts to reach Mussington for comment via his representative were unsuccessful.
