Dear Editor,
The garbage situation on Sint Maarten has been a serious concern for some time, and in recent weeks it has become harder to ignore. Piles have been building up in Cole Bay and other neighborhoods, contractual disputes between government and the local waste haulers have moved into public view, and the landfill itself has been described in recent reporting as being in a precarious state.
I want to read this alongside another story currently in the international news, because the two echo. Over the past few days, media and health authorities have been covering a cluster of Andes hantavirus cases connected to the MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged cruise vessel, with several passenger fatalities following travel in South America. Investigators in Argentina now believe the outbreak began with a 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist and his wife who visited a rat-infested landfill just outside Ushuaia, in the days before boarding the ship. The landfill is a known birding site, since rare Patagonian species are drawn to the waste, which is what brought the couple there. Authorities suspect they inhaled aerosolized particles from the urine and droppings of rats carrying the Andes strain of hantavirus. The husband died on the ship; his wife died two weeks later.
This particular outbreak started at a pile of garbage that produced enough rats to sustain a viral reservoir, in a place ordinary visitors walked into. That is the part Sint Maarten should be reading carefully. Hantavirus is the headline, and I am being careful with the word, but closer to home leptospirosis is also worth mentioning, since it spreads through water and soil contaminated by rodent urine and shows up in the Caribbean regularly. There is no outbreak here, and I am not insinuating there is, but the conditions that allow these diseases to circulate are present on this island.
For a country that sits within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and ranks among the busiest cruise destinations in the Caribbean, this is worth thinking about. Thousands of visitors move every week through ports and an airport that empty into the same streets, drains, and shorelines residents live with year-round. None of this is meant as criticism of the cruise sector, which remains a central pillar of our economy, supporting employment, businesses, government revenue, and thousands of livelihoods. The argument is simpler: a destination that depends this heavily on tourism needs strong environmental and sanitation standards, because that is how an industry like this is protected over time. When large numbers of people move through concentrated urban and coastal spaces, the basics matter — regular waste collection, clean public areas, working drainage, healthy ecosystems — and they are part of what visitors are actually paying for.
The current crisis is also a chance to stop treating waste management as a standalone sanitation issue and start treating it as part of a wider conversation about sustainability and resilience. Better waste systems give us environmental protection, climate adaptation, public health preparedness, tourism stability, and stronger communities at the same time. We already know what happens when our environmental vulnerabilities meet our economic and infrastructure pressures, because Irma made that lesson clear, and climate change continues to add pressure in ways that make integrated environmental management a present-day requirement. Clean-up campaigns and reactive sweeps after public frustration have never carried this conversation forward. The actual path runs through long-term planning, real investment in infrastructure, stronger enforcement against illegal dumping, public awareness, and the modernization of waste systems we have been discussing for years.
Sint Maarten's environmental and economic futures rest on the same foundations. The garbage problem deserves a steady, serious response, well past any single news cycle, because environmental management is one of the basic things a country like ours has to get right. A landfill at the end of the world has just made the case for taking ours, and our garbage situation in general, much more seriously.
Tadzio Bervoets
Belair
St. Maarten

Honorable Minister, Good evening,

It is with great shock and disappointment that the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) has taken note of the unilateral decision to close a section of Pondfill in front of the booths along that stretch, thereby creating what amounts to a second Carnival Village.

This decision is unfair to the stakeholders inside Carnival Village, as it cuts off direct access to the Village during the peak of the Carnival season. Our booth holders are livid, and the SCDF cannot allow this decision to go unchallenged.

The government’s original policy of allowing only 24 booths was already increased to 41, creating a chaotic, uncontrolled environment that government controllers and KPSM are now unable to manage properly. The booths remain open longer than they should, seating is now being allowed along the roadside, which was not permitted before, and the result is a mass gathering of people on a main road.

This is not a situation created by the SCDF. It was created by the government, and the SCDF and its stakeholders are now suffering the consequences.

Our booth holders inside Carnival Village are subjected almost daily to health, fire, economic, and, most recently, tax inspections. At the same time, they have seen their sales dwindle due to developments outside the Village.

We understand safety, but what is being created now is a new gathering area outside the Village, in public, with no security, no weapon scanning, no controls.

As such, we are requesting an immediate and urgent meeting. We are also requesting that the Minister reverse this decision and that the overall situation involving the booths on Pondfill, which the SCDF has warned about since a similar attempt was made two years ago, be discussed in its proper context with the SCDF, not around us.

We look forward to your swift response.

On behalf of the board of the SCDF,

Edwardo Radjouki
President
St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation
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Illidge Road 60-E
St. Maarten - Dutch Caribbean

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Dear Editor,
Two stories circulating recently in the local media deserve to be read together. The first: Sunresorts Ltd. N.V. is asking the Court of First Instance to declare its ownership in Mullet Bay as extending all the way to the coastline. The second: the Nature Foundation St. Maarten has again sounded the alarm over accelerating development activity around Mullet Bay, Beacon Hill, and Little Bay. Side by side, they raise a question that goes well beyond any single court case — who does this island actually belong to?
The Nature Foundation has been raising these concerns consistently and with evidence for years. When they speak, the right response is to listen seriously, not manage the optics. St. Maarten has finite land, finite coastline, and finite ecological resilience. The pressures accumulate quietly until what you assumed was still there is already gone.
Those pressures extend well beyond the environmental. Our roads are overwhelmed, our utilities remain fragile, and the quality of daily life for residents is being steadily worn down by growth that has routinely outpaced any serious capacity to manage it. Any honest conversation about development has to reckon with all of that, not just with what can be built.
But the question of beach access is the one I feel most urgently. Our beaches are among our most fundamental natural, social, and cultural assets — Mullet Bay especially. Families gather there. Children learn to swim there. People from every background share the same stretch of sand. Once that is gone, no settlement or marketing campaign brings it back.
I do much of my professional work in Jamaica, and one of the most painful things I encounter there is what has happened to the coastline. Less than one percent of Jamaica’s shoreline remains genuinely accessible to the public. It happened incrementally — a resort here, a concession there — each decision defensible in isolation, until the coast that belonged to Jamaicans in every real sense was no longer theirs to reach. I see the consequences every time I am there.
But I also want to be clear about what genuine public access must mean. A beach that is legally open yet practically hostile to residents has not been protected. The jet ski concessions that make the water aggressive and dangerous — and we were recently reminded how deadly that can be, following the fatal accident in Tobago — do not serve the public. The beach bar positioning itself as a faux St. Tropez, oriented entirely toward tourists, does not serve the public. The chair rental operators who hassle residents for simply sitting on their own beach certainly do not serve the public. Legal access that hands the space to a different set of commercial interests is no victory.
Beaches should be held for their natural, social, and cultural value, and that must shape what the government actually defends in court and how it manages the shoreline afterwards. St. Maarten still has a choice here. Mullet Bay is still there. I hope those in positions of responsibility treat it accordingly.

Tadzio Bervoets
Belair
St. Maarten

Internal fraud is often the "silent killer" of businesses in Sint Maarten. While external factors like inflation and high utility costs are visible, internal misappropriation can bleed a company dry before the owner even notices.
In a small, close-knit economy, trust is the foundation of business. However, that same trust often leads to a lack of oversight, creating the perfect environment for internal fraud.
1. The "Trust is Not a Control" Gap
The most common driver of internal fraud in Sint Maarten is the concentration of power. In many family-owned or small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), a single trusted employee often handles multiple roles:
• Opening the mail and receiving checks.
• Recording transactions in the accounting software.
• Reconciling bank statements.
• Signing or authorizing payments.
Without segregation of duties, an employee can easily divert funds and then "fix" the books to hide the theft. Recent cases in 2026, including a significant banking sector scandal in Philipsburg, highlight that even established institutions are vulnerable when individual employees gain unchecked access to customer accounts.
2. Common Fraud Typologies in 2026
While technology has advanced, the methods of internal theft remain remarkably consistent:
• Asset Misappropriation: This is the most prevalent form. It ranges from "skimming" (stealing cash before it is recorded) to "larceny" (stealing cash or inventory already on the books).
• Payroll Fraud: In companies with high turnover or seasonal staff, "ghost employees" can be added to the payroll, or overtime hours can be falsified.
• Vendor Kickbacks: An employee in charge of procurement might approve inflated invoices from a preferred vendor in exchange for a "commission" paid under the table.
• Business Email Compromise (BEC): Fraudsters sometimes with internal help impersonate executives to authorize urgent "wire transfers" to offshore accounts.
3. The Red Flags of an "Internal Fraudster"
Internal fraud is rarely a one-time event; it is usually a series of small thefts that escalate. Business owners should look for behavioral red flags:
• The "No-Vacation" Employee: An employee who refuses to take time off or never calls in sick. This is often because they need to be present to maintain the "cover-up" (e.g., ensuring they are the only ones to see the bank statements).
• Lifestyle Changes: Living significantly beyond one's means (new luxury cars, high-end travel) that doesn't align with their known salary.
• Financial Distress: Employees facing personal debt or family pressure may turn to "temporary borrowing" from the company, which eventually becomes permanent theft.
4. The High Cost of Recovery
For a Sint Maarten business, the damage goes beyond the stolen cash:
• Detection Lag: On average, it takes 12 to 18 months to detect internal fraud. By that time, the money is usually gone.
• Legal Hurdles: The cost of forensic audits and legal fees can often exceed the amount stolen.
• Lack of Insurance: A 2026 IMF assessment noted that many local businesses and even some banks lack comprehensive insurance against financial fraud, leaving the business to absorb 100% of the loss.
5. Prevention Strategies for Local Owners
To protect a business in this environment, owners must move toward a Forensic Culture:
• Mandatory Rotations: Force employees to take at least five consecutive days of vacation annually, during which someone else performs their duties.
• External Verification: Regularly compare supplier invoices against actual physical delivery notes. Never allow the person who orders the goods to be the same person who authorizes the payment.
• Bank Statement Reviews: The business owner should receive the original bank statement (or digital access) directly, ensuring they are the first to see the transactions before they are reconciled by staff.
• Whistleblower Channels: Create a safe, anonymous way for other employees to report suspicious behavior. Most fraud is caught via "tips" rather than audits.

To secure the financial future of any enterprise in Sint Maarten, management must move beyond traditional "trust-based" oversight and adopt a rigorous, evidence-based approach to governance. In an era of rising operational costs and increasingly sophisticated internal threats, survival is no longer just about increasing revenue it is about protecting the integrity of the capital already within the business. By implementing professional risk assessments and forensic controls, business owners can transform their operations into resilient entities capable of withstanding both the economic pressures of the Caribbean market and the hidden dangers of internal misappropriation.
Terence Jandroep, Certified Risk Auditor