Housing Trust chair charged with corruption

(CNS): The Anti-Corruption Commission has charged Geoffry Ebanks, the former chairman of the Cayman Islands National Housing Development Trust, with conflict of interest and breach of trust, contrary to the Anti-Corruption Act. Officials said Ebanks is due to appear in court on 8 November but made no further comment about the case. However, CNS understand it is in relation to the unauthorised removal of topsoil from the housing trust’s North Side site, as reported on CNS earlier this year.

A number of North Side residents contacted CNS in March when they witnessed soil and marl taken from the site of the new district housing project and delivered to land owned by the chairman of the board and to his father’s farm, in the absence of a procurement process.

In June, Deputy Governor Franz Manderson told Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart, in answer to a parliamentary question, that he could not give him any information about the allegations that topsoil and fill taken from the National Housing Development Trust site in North Side were misappropriated because the issue was under investigation by the ACC.

The ACC confirmed in July that it had undertaken an investigation and referred a file to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider charges.

CNS submitted a number of questions about the scandal to the ministry and the trust when we first learned that the soil had been moved to land owned by the chair, but we have never received a response. This week, however. The minister for housing Jay Ebanks, and member for North Side who appointed Geoffry Ebanks as chairman, confirmed he had continued to serve as chair until 26 October shortly before he was charged.