UK pondering takeover of BVI government
(CNS): The UK government is poised to take over the British Virgin Islands Government, suspending its constitution and dissolving the elected branch, for at least two years after the Commission of Inquiry report into governance in the territory was released Friday. The publication of the damning report, which found that governance in BVI “was appallingly bad”, recommends direct British rule.
It comes the day after BVI Premier Andrew Fahie was arrested in Miami on money laundering and drug charges.
In a press statement, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the arrest showed the need for “urgent action”. She said, “In January 2021, we set out significant concerns about the deteriorating state of governance in the British Virgin Islands, as well as the potential vulnerability of the islands to serious organised crime.”
Truss said that the report published today by BVI Governor John Rankin “shows clearly that substantial legislative and constitutional change is required to restore the standards of governance that the people of the British Virgin Islands are entitled to”.
She said that Amanda Milling, the minister for overseas territories, was travelling to the BVI immediately, after which the UK will announce “a clear path forward”.
During the press briefing in BVI today, when Governor Rankin released the 900-page report, he said it was unconnected to Fahie’s arrest in Miami but dealt with serious corruption among public officials, for which the evidence was overwhelming.
Sir Gary Hickinbottom, the British judge who oversaw the Commission of Inquiry and wrote the report, recommended a “governor-led administration” with an advisory council in support.
Meanwhile, Fahie appeared in court today in Miami via video link and was remanded until a pre-trial detention hearing on Wednesday and a preliminary hearing on 13 May.
See the indictment against Fahie in the CNS Library.
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Category: Caribbean, Crime, World News
There’s never just one cockroach. It takes a whole network of upper-echelon enablers to run something like this…and for years. It merits a proportionate investigation from the motherland, they should have already gone in at the first instance to preserve and secure all the contemporaneous evidence.
The usual deplorables are out calling for blood. They are not genuinely interested in the UK helping the BVI or the people of the BVI. They long for the good old day’s of privilege, oppression and subjugation. The just can’t wait to make the BVI great again. Sick!
Those of us that love Cayman are calling for blood. Those that are destroying us MUST be stopped and held to account. #Leggewasright.
You’re funny. What some of us are interested in is preventing another narcostate from developing near us.
All eyez on Cayman now, like Tupac would say.
He still does say it, if you know where to find him.
😁
900 pages detailing corruption in the BVI – that says it all!. Makes you wonder how many pages we would reach if we ever had a Commission of Enquiry. Governor, step up to the plate!.
I say in between 9,000 to 90,000 pages, if not more.
Much of it has already been written. The evidence is openly available just in admitted statements in CNS and Compass articles. Add some land registers and banking records, and have a quiet word with just a couple of the many honest professionals who have watched the shitshow unravel since First Cayman Bank, and call Sandra Hill, and the report will be done. The conclusions are foregone. We were given rope and with a lot of help from imported specialists from elsewhere in the region, have hanged ourselves. Steps need to be taken now to save our children, and Cayman’s long term viability.
They’ll make it a Netflix series
I can see it now. Jason Bateman moves from Ozarks to the Brac as some part of a Federal Witness Protection program.
Genius.
900 pages in backstory just on how an MLA earning <$500k might be able to afford to loose $200,000 a month at Seminole Hardrock without batting an eye. #suspicious
It is amazing that so many here think we’re not as corrupt as BVI or Bahamas or Turks or anywhere else. We’re the worst. The only reason were we g ores is due to the City of London (itself me of the worlds largest purveyors of taxation evasion mechanisms) it’s exceptionally close it’s with ourselves.
The majority of residents in Cayman have not one clue what’s really going on.
We are so dirty. And so high in our own supply. Tick tock
No way. You can’t compare the Cayman Islands to the City of London. City of London takes the cake easily.
#CleanUp Eastern Ave
It’s called spiritual WAR,Human cannot control what is going on here or in the world.
Kool aid got you bad.
We have a lot of corruption here, but it can’t be as bad T&C and BVI where it has reached the very top. One thing I can say for our original citizens and almost all our leaders, we have achieved a higher standard of living than any of our Caribbean neighbours through good governance rather than trading in international drug transactions. What’s more none of our local community have taken to bleating for reparations, simply because we don’t need it.
Well said.
Good luck with bleating for reparations in a non plantation based society. Look at the relative numbers slave versus free in Cayman, and compare them to the sugar plantation islands.
UK FS commented because the incident involves international players.
UK OT Office should consider the same here. At least we know they’re watching!
This is what happens when you allow animals to self govern. That jackass in the BVI was taking a page out of Noriega’s play book. The UK needs to move on this because the corruption in this case does not stop with the poop tart premier that was arrested.
you all just hate them bc they are black. Give me the BVI AND TCI over Cayman any day of the week!
Are you for real? Because they’re black?
Welcome to the twilight zone.
Relax ! We are all animals. I wonder does 11.04 know that?
So I guess he’d be happier with a coconut tree or some type of fungi as a Premier. Of course the coconut tree would have to be advised by a human that is fluent in coconutese.
Because they are black – or because they agreed to take money to transit cocaine? Or in your book is that ok if you are black but not if you are white?
Animals to self govern? Wtf
Yea that was harsh, corrupt self serving public figures are cretins and not cute like animals.
After having read through some of the BVI Commission of Enquiry Report (Volume 1: 4 April 2022), I can definitely say that this is very well-written and comprehensively highlighting areas of concern, particularly dishonesty of public officials and abuse of discretionary powers.
If I were an MP, especially a Cabinet Minister (past or present), it would serve you we to read this document. I would kindly urge the Hon. Attorney General of the Cayman Islands to read this (with his own eyes) — not just be briefed on it in summary form.
If we continue on the path of our successive governments subverting (rather than upholding) the rule of law, the Cayman Islands might be next and have our Constitution suspended (either in whole or in part) in the future. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.
If we are honest with ourselves, the same thing has been happening here for far too long.
1. 2003 status grants.
2. A preponderance of evidence against XXXX, on more than one occasion, which would have brought a conviction before any jury other than one made up of family and friends.
3. A sitting Minister with a conviction for selling drugs.
4. Unexplained gunshot to a MP’s leg.
5. Successive governments appointing Board members based on political loyalty, with no regard to their character or competence, and constantly increasing their compensation.
6. Vast sums of money given to churches in the name of “Nation Building”.
6. Vast sums of money given out every year to select groupings of supporters by calling them farmers or seamen, with no hard and fast criteria for making that determination.
This culture has been so pervasive for so long that nobody found it shocking when it was recently revealed that prisoners incarcerated at Northward Prison were receiving $1500 per month in tourism stipend. Or that topsoil from a government housing project was transported to a farm owned by a close relative of the sitting Minister responsible for the project.
Maybe we should have a Commission of Inquiry here every four years instead of elections.
Read the inquiry report. Not granting status to ordinary long term residents in breach of a 10 year standard set by the constitution. But granting it to selected individuals at the whim of cabinet. Serious questions over the awarding of government contracts, and the value for money obtained. Replacing statutory boards wholesale. Interfering in the conduct of supposedly autonomous statutory entities. Distribution of government grants – like the “farmers and fisherfolk “ program – without adequate controls over recipients and likely fraudulent recipients. Failure by MOs to register their interests. Granting of leases over Crown land. Any of that sound familiar? Anyone?
That is scary. Replace “BVI” with “Cayman Islands” and a few other odd bits of nomenclature and there is really nothing in that COI that hasn’t already happened in Cayman.
That is very true.
Small fry in the scheme of things but we even seem to have a had a female senior prison officer banging dangerous prisoners and assisting them in communicating with the outside. No arrest. No repercussions. Carry on.
The only person who suffered in consequence seems to have been the whistleblower. That screams corruption or at the very least, incredible mismanagement.
Cayman seems to be untouchable
The Cayman Islands, despite having our own issues, is not as bad as other places. However, more to the point, there are clandestine operatives in the Cayman Islands, which plays a significant role in functions relevant to MI-5 and MI-6 operations.
As such, the UK is not going to want to draw international attention to the Cayman Islands, otherwise it could interfere with their own secretive agenda, which this jurisdiction plays a strategic role therein.
Good one.
😁
True. I saw one of them the other morning grabbing a coffee at Fosters in Camana Bay.
You might have and didn’t know it. These things are not to be down played. We’ve even had a past Attorney General (David Ballentine), who turned out to be MI-6 as well as Brian Gibbs running interference in the Cayman Islands.
Same issue as in TCI – electorate that is a fraction of the actual inhabitants, and is constitutionally corruptible due to small constituencies, elects corruptible and corrupt politicians who suck on the teat of corrupt developers & criminals.
Cayman take note. Allow all residents on work permits or PR votes, or face direct rule. It is coming.
PACT take note: Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about supping with the devil.
We know who you are. You know who you are. We know what you have done.
Developers take note: The bigger you are, the harder you will fall.
We know who you are. You know who you are. We know what you have done.
I’m not for allowing rando work permit holders who have been here all of two minutes to vote. Permanent residents maybe a different story.
Allowing people with Caymanian status to hold office would also be a good step in getting rid of some of the rot.
A takeover of the BVI government is absolutely unnecessary. If I am to take the word of the opposition in the UK the current UK government is corrupt and incompetent and in need of help itself. Provide assistance and guidance but don’t return to the colonial era tactics.
I can see where you might be concerned if you are involved, mister 6:13pm……. Are you?
I would like to see them take some action against the thieves in the Cayman Islands “Untouchables”.
Me too.
Lodge has a bunch of so-called untouchables, who have got away with bloody murder literally and figuratively.
So true. I remember when lodge started smuggling weed, then they started to bring in hard drugs so they had to bring in guns to protect the shipment. Then lodge opened night clubs to sell the drugs, and then people started stabbing and shooting each other in the lodge clubs because they were high. Then lodge started selling numbers, but when somebody’s number played they got them drunk and beat them up and took the money back. Then lodge went into the work permit business with “spanish” women and Jamaican men; something for everybody. Then lodge started taking politicians overseas and swapping their personal credit cards with their government-issued cards without their knowing. Then lodge opened churches and took millions in Nation Building grants, and 3000 lodge members are receiving tourism stipends, and lodge started a farm where all the good government topsoil is being dumped, and if you are not careful lodge will shoot you in the leg like they did Dr. Frank.
Lodge are untouchable. Until that changes, unbridled power goes unchecked.
Uh, just ponder the sorry state of legal and ethical affairs here in Cayman. Not much to crow about, might as well agree to closer oversight from the UK. We clearly are not up to the task of self-governing, as much as we wish to be. We are a young territory. In another 20-30 years we may have the proper ethical standards of decades behind us to self-govern; but for now we just don’t have the history of experience.
I dunno. Sounds like kind of a bad spot when your leader premier is an international drug dealer.
Were you once in charge of immigration or something? Methinks thou doth protest too much.
I hear you Shakespeare.
Ummm, this is the colonial era. Happily for us, we choose to be a colony, and are MUCH better for it. Same for the BVI. There are rules to follow to have anything like the standards of governance required. God Save the Queen. Carry on.
How do you provide assistance and guidance to people actively engaged in corruption, or who have failed to modify behaviour after years of similar behaviour? There is an obvious alternative to intervention by the UK. If BVI wants to it can become wholly independent, at which point the UK has no reputational consequences, no issues with local politics breaching UK treaty obligations or any governance responsibility. Simple. Yet somehow the BOTC strongly resist the idea.
It is absolutely necessary. Read the report. Then look in the mirror and tell me the same factors do not apply in Cayman. Congratulations Cayman. The ill conceived insistence on Caribbeanization has borne fruit. It is a shitshow. The department of education results are simply a gauge of the destruction of our governance across the board.
that is completely untrue and there is over 50 days worth of inquiry on YouTube and a report issued yesterday, and an indictment from the DEA to explain why.
6.13pm At least Boris is not involved in drug trafficking or woman beating, and who in their right mind would take the word of the opposition?.
Oh God. Please do. It will either shock our own shitshow purveyors into honesty and accountability, or provide perfect practice for achieving the same here. It is disgusting what our governance has become.
Our own corrupt crew are to arrogant to shock. Just wait, time longer than rope especially if there’s a noose at the end of it.
Them need try come here first.
This
Yup. BVI cabinet gives 250 people status with no vetting and UK freaks out. Potential for corruption they say! (Of course, the UK is correct on that).
Cayman cabinet gives almost 3,000 people status in fundamentally the same way (including the AG who said it was all fine) and no problem!
Will someone please square that circle?
WTF?
#Leggewasright.
…and, don’t dismiss barrage of UK Passport applications & issuances (by the CI Gov’t Immigration Department) that followed, in and around the time of “the mass Cayman Islands Status Grant give away”.
Work Permit holders & Permanent Residents assuming UK Citizenship/Passports via Cayman Islands Status Grants; that is, the Cayman Islands Governnent giving away rights & unfettered access to another man’s country.
I’m so glad the UK, again, has control of this matter & issuing their own Passports.
They are still giving passports to persons who are not qualified and who are wrongfully assumed to have Caymanian status.
Tell’em.
When will this criticism end ? Most of the Cayman status grants were awarded because the govt and it’s supporters had failed to allow long term resident foreigners any right of abode. They had the threat of deportation over their heads whether they had 10 or 40 years of residency. It was only right that such people earned status. Of course there were bound to be anomalies and corruption in a smaller portion but the overall idea was just and proper. And note that none of the status recipients wanted to be called “Caymanians”; a 2nd class citizenship was all they needed.
Bullshit. You do not know what you are taking about. The Board gave out hundreds of grants following proper procedures, at the same time.
Nonsense. The Board gave hundreds of status grants at the same time following lawful process. The cabinet grants were not reserved for long time residents. Persons who had never lived in Cayman received grants. Choice of realtor was amongst the key criterion. It became overt vote buying. They even changed the elections law when they realized the persons that they gave status to could not vote because they were ineligible for Cayman passports. Some could not qualify because they were criminals! The damage to Cayman was enormous and continues.
Yes- Irreparable Damages for many generations to come.
Let it go, it was a long, long time ago.
Never. Not before a proper investigation.
After an honest inquiry, appropriate criminal charges and revocations, I will.
It’s alot more than just status grants, it’s rotten to the core
I don’t think you’ve read the whole thing…
AG has been in the middle of issues, time and time again, without facing consequences. This needs to stop.
He needs to retire, not to be replaced by another cut from the same cloth.