Chris Saunders
Christopher Selvin Saunders, Bodden Town West (incumbent)
Independent member of the opposition
Biography:
Saunders (52) first ran for office in 2013, campaigning as a member of the UDP for the multi-member constituency of Bodden Town. He was unsuccessful that year, but ran again in 2017 as an independent and won the new single-member constituency of Bodden Town East in a four-way race. He remained a member of the opposition throughout the administration.
In April 2021, in a head-to-head against Vincent Frederick, he got almost 80% of the vote — 902 people voted for him, the most for any candidate that year. In the PACT administration of independent MPs that formed after the election, Saunders initially served as deputy premier and minister of finance, economic development and labour.
However, in March 2023, Saunders resigned or was fired from PACT (see below). For the rest of the administration, he sat as an independent on the opposition benches and did not caucus with the PPM.
In February 2025, he said he would not join the PPM, but out of the three political parties running in the upcoming general election, he said they were the group he was most inclined to back. However, he has recently revealed that he is among a group of independent candidates who plan to be part of a coalition government.
Saunders was born in George Town on 6 February 1973 and his family moved to Bodden Town when he was ten. He attended Truth for Youth School and Calabar High School in Jamiaca. While working as a civil servant, he also worked as a night auditor at a hotel to save for university. However, he obtained a government scholarship to attend Pace University in New York City, where he majored in accounting.
At Pace, he was the first non-American president of the Student Government Association (SGA) representing the interest of over 10,000 students and responsible for 76 student organisations on campus. As President of the SGA, he also served in the Senate of Pace University and was an active member of the Model United Nations team.
Saunders is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and has held senior positions in the banking, telecommunications, and financial services industries. Within the civil services he has worked in the departments of Lands & Survey, Internal Audit, Treasury and the Auditor General’s Office.
Saunders has in the past volunteered to teach accounting at the prison. He has served on the HSA board, and the Business Staffing Board of the Immigration Department.
Controversies:
- Saunders was the managing director of Bank Cainvest while also serving as finance minister when in November 2020, the bank was sanctioned by CIMA, which imposed a discretionary administrative fine of CI$100,000 for breaches of the Anti-Money Laundering Regulations in connection with failings identified in 2018. The bank maintained that the fines were in relation to private banking business, which it was no longer involved in, and all staff members who were responsible for the compliance failures had since left the organisation.
- In February 2025, Saunders revealed an incident that happened during a Cabinet meeting in December 2022, in which Martyn Roper, the Cayman Islands governor at the time, accused members of the government of being involved in serious organised crime. In subsequent correspondence between the two men, Saunders, the deputy premier and finance minister at the time, said that comments Roper had made at a Cabinet meeting in December 2022 were racist.
- When Saunders left the PACT Government in March 2023, he said he resigned because of “differences that are material to” him and then-premier Wayne Panton working together. However, Panton said he fired Saunders, not, as rumoured, because of the row with Roper, but because of his conduct in relation to civil servants working with him. CNS learned that several public sector workers in Saunders’ offices are on leave after making complaints about what Panton implied was bullying and even sexual harassment.
Source:
Cayman News Service
Cayman Compass
CIG
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