What should we know about Hushang Ansary?
Quite a few. In his 96 years of life, this businessman-politician has been active on several fronts. Ansary was born in Iran in 1927. In his younger years he was a press photographer, but he worked his way up and entered the circles surrounding the Shah. He served as ambassador to the US and was also minister of finance and economic affairs.
Ansary already had it both ways at the time, because he was a politician and made his fortune with companies that supplied goods to the government. When the Shah was deposed by Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1980, the businessman-politician was safe in the US, where he went on to build a business empire in offshore and real estate. We mainly know Ansary as the man who took over Ennia, the largest pension insurer in the Caribbean Netherlands, in 2006 and subsequently stripped it financially year after year. In 2018, the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten intervened, but by then Ansary had already withdrawn 570 million euros from Ennia, almost three quarters of the insurer’s assets.
How did he empty Ennia?
When he took over Ennia, Ansary promised to strengthen the capital position, but did the opposite. He siphoned off the reserves through investments in his other businesses and real estate. A well-known example is the purchase of Mullet Bay, a golf resort on Sint Maarten that was severely damaged by Hurricane Luis in 1995. Ansary, with the help of his daughter and three Ennia commissioners, had this booked with the insurer for more than 400 million euros: the actual value was about a tenth of that.
Ansary regarded Ennia as a cash register from which one could grab the pleasant things in life at will. This is how ‘Mr. Ambassador’, as he was called by his employees, liked to travel in private jets to his homes in the US or holiday addresses in the Bahamas. The Court in Curaçao this week called him “a large consumer of private flights”. The businessman also used the assets of the 30,000 Ennia retirees to make a name for himself in the US: millions for cultural institutions, but especially for political campaigns of leading Republicans. He is also friends with fellow contemporary Henry Kissinger (100 years old), who was for some time director of SunResorts, Ansary’s company that owned Mullet Bay.
Does Ansary actually pay back the Ennia millions?
This week, the Curacao Court stated in an interim judgment of the appeal that Ansary must repay at least 132 million euros. That amount could increase even further, but the judge first wants an independent expert to look at the market value of the Mullet Bay hotel. Ansary indicated in March that he is willing to pay back, but he will probably delay this as long as possible. The Ennia funds have largely been siphoned off via Cyprus to the tax haven of Luxembourg. Why did the Central Bank of Curaçao not intervene sooner? That surprise and annoyance was noticeable during the debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday. The MPs considered the proposal of the outgoing cabinet to support Curaçao and Sint Maarten with an emergency loan of 600 million. If this does not happen, the pension pot will be so empty at the beginning of 2024 that policyholders will be cut 80 percent, with all the consequences for the economy on the islands. Does Ansary lose sleep over it? That seems unlikely given his life style. Criminal prosecution? You can hear him thinking: will my time last?
A version of this article also appeared in the September 16, 2023 newspaper.