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 I just received this email from Simon Ford the CEO of
Blue Banana in Dubai, looks as though the ride may have come to an end, quite a
nice chap in my experience, however one may say too nice....I can feel for him
everyone including H2O has had difficulty in collecting payments for the past
six months, I hope he doesn’t owe that much that it effects his health adversely. Also I should point out that I am still verifying if this is 100% true - but it looks that way.
Personal
Letter from Simon Ford, bluebanana.com
Dear all bluebanana.com customers, suppliers, and people whose
lives have been effected,
I wanted to write a letter to the Dubai public to apologise
for the set of circumstances that have lead to the closure of bluebanana.com
and my departure from Dubai. I am not trying to justify that what has happened
is morally correct, it most certainly is not, but there is a very stark reality
in doing business in UAE which unfortunately results in the most horrible
decisions having to be made. We have continued to work with financial
institutions and suppliers over the course of the last few days to see if the
business can continue in some capacity, but this has now become impossible,
resulting in the immediate closure of the business.
This letter is a formal and personal commitment to repay
every last Dirham to everyone who is owed money from bluebanana.com. This
includes every customer whose experience hasn’t been honoured, our suppliers
who have been so supportive over the last few years and have now been let down
in an unprecedented way, every bank who has believed in us and lent us money,
and of course every employee of bluebanana.com, all of which have worked so
incredibly hard over the course of their time with the business and have been
put through absolute hell during the last few weeks and certainly the last few
days.
On a personal level, I have been through the most soul
destroying and emotionally horrific 4 days of my life, and am likely to
continue to do so for some time as my integrity is repeatedly called into
question and rumours of me stealing people’s money, amongst other accusations,
grow out of control in Dubai. The reality is I have left with
nothing but the simple fact that my business’s failure has effected many
people’s lives in an unimaginable way and left many people burdened financially
with unpaid dues. For this I am eternally sorry and am committed to
taking personal responsibility to paying back everything that is owed, no
matter how long this may take.
The unfortunate reality is that the businesses debt
accumulation has grown exponentially since the last quarter of 2008, with
further liabilities being accumulated with the desperate objective of keeping
the business alive and avoiding what so many other businesses have done, simply
stopped paying their staff. Tragically, the debt of the business reached
a level on Thursday 18th June that personal threats were being made
against me and my family which left me no choice but to leave 4 years of
passion behind and take my family out of the country before start of business
Sunday 21st June. I have since been informed that certain
individuals arrived at my place of residence in Dubai at the start of Sunday,
confirming that the follow through on many of the threats was very real.
I am not running away from debt, I am purely protecting those
dearest to me and getting out of a country which, due to the lack of structured
bankruptcy laws and a banking system which has zero flexibility on loan
repayments, drives people to make horrible decisions.
During the course of this week, a large number of bank loan
payments would have cleared from the bluebanana.com account which would have
resulted in no cash left for my team to make their own financial
commitments. Removing this cash has allowed payments to be made to
creditors, plus money which is currently being transferred to employees
accounts in Dubai. I apologise if this is viewed as the wrong thing to
do, but I feel that my priority had to be to ensure that staff had something,
if not all of their salary, together with short term loan payments to allow the
restructure of personal liabilities over a longer period of time.
For those people who feel the need to create elaborate
stories regarding my departure, this I suppose is inevitable, but I ask to you
to consider the truth and watch as I fulfil my commitment to repay everything
owed.
I have set up an email account for people to contact me with
regards to specific outstanding payments, but will proactively contact all
outstanding on our records over the course of the next 48 hours.
I am sorry Dubai
Yours Sincerely,
Simon
Bluebanana.com
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