A woman had to fork out $14,000 of her own money for life-saving surgery because her employer failed to pay her health insurance.The woman, who asked not to be named, is among a number of former employees at the Sovereign Group who were left with medical bills totalling thousands of dollars having gone months with no cover despite the company continuing to make deductions from their pay cheques.She was initially turned down for the surgery by Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore because of the unpaid medical bill - despite being told by Sovereign that it had been paid - and had to pay out from her own pocket to receive the treatment.An investigation by The Royal Gazette has revealed ex-Sovereign workers alleged there were several occasions when staff were not paid on time and some are still owed money by the company, while many of their social insurance and pension contributions were not made either.This paper has obtained documents that corroborate the claims of the former staff, including memos from Sovereign detailing staff health insurance, payroll tax, pension and social insurance contributions; pay, bonuses and benefits; pay slips; and a copy of the company’s policies and procedures; as well as medical bills from the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB), correspondence with Johns Hopkins Hospital, pension statements from BF&M and a summary of social insurance contributions from the Department of Social Insurance.The employees also accused Sovereign of making empty promises to its workers and never revealing where the money really came from to finance the company, adding that Kenny Burns, then president and CEO of Sovereign Flight Support Ltd, was used as a scapegoat with staff being told that he had been suspended while an investigation by the Bermuda Police Service was being conducted. But Police found no evidence of criminal activity and the investigation was concluded.The woman who was declined surgery said: “Our insurance, nothing was paid. While we were getting paid we were told that everything was paid up to date but it wasn’t.“I went to the doctor and found out that I had to go away for surgery so I went to Johns Hopkins and they checked my insurance and found out that it hadn’t been paid. Sovereign promised me that it would be paid but the hospital said that it hadn’t and it kept going back and forth between the two.“Eventually Sovereign said that they would pay half ($16,000) that morning and send the balance ($14,000) the next day so I went ahead and had the surgery but they never paid the balance. I kept on asking them if they had paid it and they said ‘yes’ but then a lady from the hospital contacted me and asked what was happening with the balance.“The bottom line was it wasn’t paid and recently I had to go back there for surgery but was denied because my balance wasn’t paid. My surgery had to be rescheduled after I talked to the hospital’s finance department and ended up paying some of the bill myself and now I have been left to pay the rest.”She has since had no success in getting Sovereign to pay up and is in debt by a combined $17,000 to Johns Hopkins Hospital and the BHB Credit Office (for other treatment).“To me Sovereign just didn’t care and they go about their lives now as if nothing is wrong and the rest of us have been left behind,” she said.“When they told me that I wouldn’t get the surgery my blood pressure went sky high because I thought that everything had been taken care of and couldn’t understand what was going on.”The former employees said that Sovereign promised its staff that they were going to be the highest paid at LF Wade International Airport and would have premium health insurance when the company was officially launched in January 2008.But when the workers found out they only had health insurance for three months at a time and would then go another three months with no cover on three occasions, they demanded to know what was happening and were told by Sovereign that their insurer BF&M was “having issues” with the company’s account.“The whole time they were telling us we had no insurance they were taking it out of our pay cheques,” said another former Sovereign employee who was hit with an unpaid medical bill for almost $2,500. During her time with the company she has paid almost $12,000 in social insurance, payroll tax, health insurance and pension contributions.The former staff member, who worked for Sovereign from start to finish between December 2007 and February 2010, alleged that workers were told by the company they should only go to the doctor if they had to and in some cases were urged to take sick days and get paid instead. It got to a point, she said, where some employees refused to work on the ramp at the airport because they weren’t insured.She said that as a result Sovereign told its employees they would be put on the Government’s Hospital Insurance Plan (HIP), but the company did not make any contributions to the scheme because it claimed it didn’t have the money and when she contacted Government was told that the company had never signed up for the plan.Since Sovereign was dissolved in February last year, she claimed that many of its former workers have been listed and billed by the BHB Credit Office for unpaid medical treatment.Concerned about what was happening with her social insurance contributions, she contacted the Social Insurance Department to try to find out and was told that an account had been opened but only four payments had been made, despite assurances from Sovereign that it had been paying in every week. Meanwhile her private pension provider, also BF&M, disclosed that only two contributions totalling just over $400 had been made and her employer had not matched them, she said.The ex-Sovereign worker alleged that staff had been told by the company at a meeting on March 16, 2009 that Mr Burns had been asked to leave and was no longer a shareholder. However, the share register reveals that he owns a 50-percent stake in the Sovereign Group and Sovereign Ground Services Ltd.Sheldon Steede, the then vice-president of Sovereign Flight Support, is listed as owning the other 50 percent of the Sovereign Group and Sovereign Ground Services shares.Mr Burns and Mr Steede each owned a 50 percent share in Sovereign Flight Support until their holding was reduced by 40 percent with 4,800 shares being transferred to Westport Trust Company Ltd as trustees of The Apphia Trust in April 2007 and then Ricardo Andison Small and Lawrence Scott Fox who were appointed as the new trustees, according to the company share register.The former employee said that the company told employees that Mr Burns was the only person who could sign cheques and that was the reason why they had not been paid on several occasions.From the outset, she said staff were told by Sovereign that there was a silent partner whose name couldn’t be revealed.“We asked who the shareholders and investors for the company were and they have never been willing to tell us,” she said.She said that staff were introduced by the company to new investors including Steven Daniels, owner of Trinity Construction and listed as a director of Sovereign Ground Services Ltd, who financed and built the private jet facility which is believed to have cost around $1 million and now sits redundant.Other new investors were new president, CEO and ramp manager Leon Williams, department general manager Charlton Dill, Granville Russell and Mr Brangman, and staff were told to deal with Mr Steede and his wife Welma in future, and that the issue with the insurance had been resolved and would never happen again.“Sheldon and his wife Welma claimed that Kenneth (Burns) had not put a red cent into the company and yet when they opened he was the only person who was allowed to sign a cheque,” she said.“So according to them, having made no investment in the company he then went to having sole responsibility for all the cash - it didn’t add up.”The Sovereign Group has a line of creditors queuing up to collect money due for unpaid services, including The Department of Airport Operations, East End Aircraft Services Ltd and Technics Auto Centre Ltd.East End Aircraft Services was awarded $119,480 and $500 in costs after a writ was filed against Sovereign Ground Support Ltd in June 2009, according to a court listing.Technics Auto Centre, who serviced Sovereign’s cars and trucks, was awarded $59,581.69 in its writ against the Sovereign Group Ltd according to court files, but is still awaiting payment said a lawyer representing the company.Houston Flight Support, which leased the ground support equipment to Sovereign, is owed $300,000 for the hire of the equipment over a one-and-a-half year period and the cost of shipping it back to the US.Esso Bermuda is also believed to be owed money by Sovereign and to have cut off its fuel supply to the company. Mark Fields, lead country manager of Esso Bermuda, said that the company could not comment on the matter as it was confidential.In the same month employees received a memo from Sovereign saying that they were going to be paid hourly instead of an annual salary, with some staff seeing a reduction in their pay packet as a result, said the ex-staff member, and despite no mention in the company’s policies and procedures that salaries could be decreased.She alleged that four staff members who were on contracts were put back on full pay but asked not to tell anyone else about it by the company.In addition, a number of staff worked overtime, with some doing 50 to 60-hour weeks during the summer, but never received any extra pay, she said.Christmas bonuses had also been promised, she said, but workers never received them, because the company said that Mr Burns had signed the contract stipulating this but had not given it to anyone.“Kenneth has been the scapegoat of the whole story and blamed for every single thing that has happened,” she said.On one occasion, the former worker claimed to have been told that Sovereign was losing $90,000 per month, but was given assurances that investors were still pumping money into the company.Sovereign, which was struck off by the Registrar of Companies in December 2006 for failure to submit its annual fees and filed a petition to be reinstated two years later, was dissolved on February 15, 2010 and Renaissance Aviation offered some of the company’s former employees positions, including Mr Steede, who still maintains that he runs Sovereign, she said.She said that Sovereign started with a workforce of 12 and built it up to 40, split between the ground services and flight support divisions, by the time it closed, continually bringing in new staff and investors in the hope that when the private jet facility got back on its feet the company would be able to pay off its debts and go into profit.Describing morale at the company as “terrible”, the ex-Sovereign employee said that half of the staff knew what was happening and the other half, who went to church with Mr Steede, chose to believe his version of events instead. She added that Mr Steede never returned calls from his staff and the only way to get hold of him was to follow him around the airport.Government had to pay out $2.75 million at the end of 2009 to settle with Bermuda Aviation Services (BAS) for breaching the company’s exclusive rights to offer private jet services at the airport, which ran until 2014, when they gave rival operator Sovereign Flight Support permission to provide a private jet service. In return, BAS agreed to waive its rights. Government was also ordered by Supreme Court to pay up more than $202,569.16 in damages for contravening BAS’ rights, as exclusively reported by The Gazette in 2009.Last month United Bermuda Party leader Kim Swan raised concerns in the House of Assembly that Government would have to pay damages for improperly handing out the licence to Sovereign as its principals had made a huge financial commitment to the business on the basis of being granted permission to offer the service by former Premier Ewart Brown in his capacity as Transport Minister. The Auditor General is understood to be looking into the matter.In August 2009, Government announced its decision not to renew Sovereign Group’s licence to offer private jet services due to a material breach, separate from the court ruling upholding BAS’ exclusive rights.But the former Sovereign worker said that Mr Steede had told employees the company wouldn’t close despite the court ruling and the loss of its licence, and when they asked for minutes of the shareholders’ meetings were told that none were kept.“It was almost as if they knew BAS would take a pay out and then they would soon be back in business again,” she said.Even when the private jet facility closed, she said, a full-time cleaner and receptionist were kept on to run the place and the company told some of the employees they would be asked back when it reopened.Another former Sovereign employee, who alleged that she had been made numerous unkept promises by the company, experienced a similar situation with her health insurance, being left to pick up unpaid medical bills totalling $5,000 to $6,000.After going back and forward between Sovereign and BF&M, she was then advised by Anthony Richardson, whose staff were told the company had brought him in as a consultant, to get her own cover. Responding to an e-mail from this paper in December 2009, Mr Richardson denied he was a consultant at Sovereign.“I had to try to get money out of the company to pay my health insurance,” said the ex-Sovereign worker. “They kept saying the insurance company had messed up and lost the cheque.“They were supposed to have signed up for HIP, but we never had it either so I had to go to seek and pay the insurance out of my own pocket.”She said that only $300 was paid into her private pension and no payments were made by Sovereign towards her Government pension.“I don’t know how they operated as long as they did,” she said.“The last flight to arrive at the terminal was when Government brought in the Uighurs and it closed soon after that.”BF&M’s president and CEO John Wight said that it was his company’s policy not to discuss specific customer details. He said: “As a general policy however when BF&M does not receive health premiums from employers over an elapsed period of say 90 days or more (during which time claims have been paid for employees serviced by King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and doctors), the company has no recourse but to terminate coverage.”Mr Burns denied being involved with the company any longer when contacted by this newspaper on Wednesday. Yesterday his Facebook page listed the Sovereign Group Ltd, Sovereign Flight Support and Sovereign Ground Services as employers.Attempts to contact Mr Steede yesterday were unsuccessful and Mr Daniels had not responded by press time to a message left by this newspaper.