As demonstrated below the claims of the Labor Department are absolutely false, and it only has itself to blame for the uncertainty surrounding this issue.

As you know, on February 08, 2011, the Court of First Instance ruled that Simpson Bay Resort Management Company ("SBRMC") was required to continue to abide by the collective labor agreement entered into between Wifol and a different company, Pelican Resort Club Management Company ("PRCMC"). The Court found that the SBRMC and PRCMC companies were one and the same, despite the obvious fact that the companies were currently litigating against each other and had different interests and different principals. Not surprisingly, SBRMC appealed this verdict.

Shortly thereafter, as you also well know, SBRMC, Wifol, and the government of Sint Maarten agreed to a settlement to try and bring clarity and stability to the matter. This settlement, along with certain government guarantees, called for SBRMC to conditionally request the dismissal of 50 people. The reason the request was conditional was as follows: all parties acknowledged that should SBRMC win its appeal, the lower court finding that SBRMC had to abide by a collective labor agreement it was not a party to would be eliminated, and therefore SBRMC's request to lay off certain workers would be null and void. This was the very reason behind the goverment's provision of certain guarantees in that same settlement -- all parties realized that if SBRMC won the appeal SBRMC would have spent the previous months being forced to pay employees it had no legal obligation to employ.

During the many months that followed while all parties waited for the appellate court judgment, SBRMC's attorney, Jairo Bloem, requested that the Labor Department address the layoff request no less than 10 times. Formal written requests, with the required financial data, were sent to the Labor Department on May 26, 2011, May 30, 2011, and on other dates via electronic mail. Mr. Bloem also contacted the Labor Department by telephone, but he received absolutely no response at all other than a letter requesting that the termination request be sent in under SBRMC's name. There was never a request for additional information, financial information, or any other information relevant to the dismissal request. On the contrary, Labor Affairs sent the application to Wifol and requested its response. Moreover, Labor Affairs scheduled a date for a hearing by the Labor Committee of SBRMC on the termination request filed . Needless to say that unless Labor Affairs considered the application complete, it had absolutely no reason to take referenced actions.

Quite simply, SBRMC does not know why the Secretary General of the labor Department who is ultimately responsible for the granting or not granting of a decision on a dismissal request has not procured that Labor Affairs performed its job by taking a decision. SBRMC understands that the Department Head of Labor Affairs was changed, but this does not justify the alleged unawareness of Labor Affairs as to the status of matters and it's the factual incorrect representation of what happened pertaining to the application process, let alone not procuring that a decision is taken 7 months after it was requested.

On November 04, 2011, the Court of Appeals in fact overturned the verdict of the Court of First Instance, in essence finding that SBRMC was not required to abide by the Collective Labor Agreement between Wifol and PRCMC. This, in essence, meant that Wifol workers were no longer deemed to be employees of SBRMC and therefore any request to dismiss employees under that Collective Labor Agreement was rendered null and void. In other words, just as one cannot fire their neighbor's accountant, Wifol employees were not considered employees of SBRMC in the first place, and it was therefore impossible for SBRMC to ask to dismiss employees it did not itself employ.

The fact that such a verdict would render SBRMC's previous request to the Labor Department null and void had been discussed many, many times with government and with Wifol, and was a key component of the settlement between SBRMC, Wifol, and the government. It should have come to no great surprise to the government, nor to this newspaper which has ardently reported on every aspect of this labor dispute, that SBRMC's request to lay off employees was no longer of any effect following the Court of Appeals' verdict. Nevertheless, this paper --without seeking comment from SBRMC or its attorneys -- chose to print the ludicrous allegations of Labor Affairs; namely, that SBRMC is to blame for the delay of Labor Affairs in handling this matter.

To set the record straight, based on the Court of Appeals' verdict, SBRMC is not party to any agreement with Wifol at all, does not currently employ any Wifol members under the Collective Labor Agreement entered into between PRCMC and Wifol, and has no further obligation to employ any of those workers in the future. That this paper, or the Secretary General of Labor Affairs, would believe otherwise given the extensive amount of reporting, mediation, and discussion over this matter indicates to SBRMC that politics, and not facts, are of chief concern.

Despite the fact that SBRMC has no current obligation to Wifol members, SBRMC will, in the coming days, make a proposal to re-employ persons laid off as a result of this ongoing dispute. We trust that when the details of this proposal are released, both the government and the newspaper will truthfully and honestly comment on the matter with an eye towards the facts and not political considerations that serve only to sow further discord.

Sincerely,

SIMPSON BAY RESORT OWNERS COMPANY, N.V.

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Mark A. Miller