Dear Editor, In 1996, the Cook Islands went bankrupt. Lloyd Powell of the Asian Development Bank was appointed as the Bankruptcy Trustee during the forced restructuring process.

Approximately 3000 Cook Islands public service workforce was reduced to 1444 employees.

Prior to that in 1995, Prime Minister Geoffrey Henry’s Cabinet and advisors contrived a billion-dollar fake paper Letters of Guarantee scam to fund our $100 million debt. The fraudulent scheme was exposed and the bankruptcy proceedings ensued.

Fast forward to 2023 and Prime Minister Mark Brown hatched the Tainted Cryptocurrency Recovery Bill 2023 that was slammed to be a potential scam, with concerns raised regarding its unclear and confusing language, potential for abuse, and lack of transparency, particularly due to the possibility of allowing private entities to seize cryptocurrency assets without proper legal due process.

In 1995 our debt of $100 million is worth about $207 million in today’s money making our debt of over $250 million even greater than it was in 1995. Is that the reason Mark gave the green light for the Tainted Cryptocurrency Bill, desperate to stave off another bankruptcy?

The reason we are bankrupt is the result of 15 years of Cook Islands Party rule where the public service employment rate has ballooned to over 40 per cent of the entire workforce in our nation and 43 per cent of the budget’s money goes to paying public servants.

Geoffrey Henry to his credit took his lumps after everything else failed and admitted his mistakes but not Mark Brown, who has mortgaged our future to the China government and our beautiful Cook Islands way of life has changed forever, it will never be the same.

Steve Boggs