Response to premier’s statement delayed
Members of Cayman’s opposition political party have remained uncharacteristically silent following detailed statements by Premier McKeeva Bush regarding two police investigations proceeding against him.
Opposition members – including People’s Progressive Movement party Chairman Anton Duckworth – publicly called for Mr. Bush to offer an explanation for those matters.
“The country’s interests would also have been served by Mr. Bush giving the explanation,” Mr. Duckworth wrote in a letter to the Caymanian Compass. “The growing suspicion of corruption at the top of our government has been very damaging in all sorts of ways.”
Mr. Bush offered just such a public explanation on Friday in a story printed by the Compass entitled “Bush tells all”. The premier made detailed statements regarding an ongoing investigation over payments made to him by Atlanta, Georgia-based developer Stanley Thomas in 2004. A copy of the story can be found online at http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2012/05/11/Bush-tells-all/.
Earlier last week, the newspaper ran separate accounts of Mr. Bush’s involvement in a dynamite importation case being investigated by police as well as publishing details of a real estate bill issued by Mr. Bush to Mr. Thomas in April 2004.
The newspaper has contacted opposition party members, as well as North Side Member of the Legislative Assembly Ezzard Miller, for a response to Mr. Bush’s statements several times since Friday.
On Tuesday, Opposition Leader Alden McLaughlin offered the following: “McKeeva’s explanation raises more questions than it answers. We shall be addressing the issue nationally.”
The People’s Progressive Movement is believed to be planning a public meeting to address the issues raised by Mr. Bush. Mr. McLaughlin said Tuesday that he’s pleased the premier made his public statements, but declined to respond substantively to them at that time.
“He’s finally responding following my call for him to do so,” the opposition leader said.
The uproar over police investigations into Premier Bush reached new heights when the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service released the following statement:
“The RCIPS can confirm that there are a number of investigations currently ongoing involving the Premier of the Cayman Islands, the Hon. McKeeva Bush. One involves allegations of financial irregularities in relation to a land deal. In addition, a further allegation of financial irregularities has been made which is entirely separate from the first investigation. Finally, allegations have been made in relation to the involvement of the premier in the periphery of a recent incident where a quantity of explosives were imported to the Cayman Islands without the necessary permit.
“All three of these investigations are actively ongoing. The governor and the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] are being kept fully updated.”
Mr. Bush has said the RCIPS statement was “inappropriate” and has hammered the UK foreign office over the matter.
The premier said last month that “every excuse” was used by certain civil servants in the UK foreign office to not support his government’s efforts to rebuild the Cayman Islands’ economy, presumably referring to projects – including the cruise port terminal and the ForCayman Investment Alliance land swap with the government – that the United Democratic Party government has proposed.
He also alleged that “rumours” of police investigations were part of the “long history of the FCO in the Caribbean”.
“That’s a fundamental reason why they never give up the control of the police in any constitutional reform,” Mr. Bush said.
“They control the police for everything they can get them to do.
“The Labour Party has had the worst record of this,” Mr. Bush said.
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A copy of the agreement with Stan Thomas is all that is required.
Editor’s note: http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2012/05/10/Bush-s-real-estate–bill–obtained/
As Tiger has stated…there is a third-party involvement here.
The evidence of McKeeva Bush’s involvement, as a real estate agent, has been so much the focus of official and public commentary that this one key fact has been entirely overlooked…
In the attempt to use the situation to bring about his political downfall.
The original court case from which all this evolved should shed much light on the original deals that were agreed…obviously, if there was a court case at the end of it all…there had to be an agrieved party who sought restitution through the courts.
I strongly suspect that those parties have either not been located or have refused to co-operate with the RCIPS in their investigations…
Or have given evidence that exonerates McKeeva Bush.
You can be sure, if the RCIPS had anything on which to charge and prosecute him…
They would have produced it by now.
Yes the opposition has been too quiet, seems like Kurt is still running the PPM. One man One Vote and Single member constituencies were left of the table during his reign another reason why Kurt should hang up running for reelection. The new leader of the PPM is slow of the mark and does some things half hearted maybe he is learning the job but he is a little too unsure of himself. I like the man but he is not hammering the travels, investigations, interfering with contracts, nation building money and shenanigans of the Premier enough for my taste. Never the less, this is my opinion and we must secure our small nation from an over reaching Premier that seems to dwell in the past and dictate our future putting all things foreign first instead of our country and its citizens. We have a major political crisis on our hands and we have to pull together to balance it out NOW.
Dear Editor,
I have seen the copies of the demand letter and the others that you have so kindly provided. I am asking to see a copy of the agreement that is mentioned in the per our agreement letter.
If the agreement was only verbal, and for a sum that could potentially exceed 1 million then we might think the Premier to be a fool, and very few people would believe that.
Anyone willing to sue people for comments made on a talk show would never hesitate to take someone who owes them a huge sum of money to court.
I would imagine that the date when McKeeva first met Stan Thomas, and the date when the agreement was reached are pertinent facts that the opposition and everyone else would like to hear in order to form a clearer picture.
Firery, your comments are definitely backed up by the leaking of witness statements to another Cayman Islands media outlet.
To describe this as unprecedented may be going too far but it not something I have encountered before. In fact in the UK the publication of such material has long been recognised as counter-productive.
The only possible source of the statements is the RCIPS but they are confidential documents so whoever passed them on did so in complete non-compliance of both their terms of employment and the law. If fact it is conduct almost identical to the allegations that kicked off Operation Tempura.
Maybe Commissioner Baines is going to launch an investigation into this? If he does not I will be asking for an investigation through my contacts over here.
With regard to John’s comment below, the witness statements he refers to were published on the US-based website Offshore Alert last year. They have been in the public domain for quite some time.
Fair comment and I stand corrected but where did Offshore Alert get them from?
As I said before leaking of witness statements should be a non-event because the media, in a UK-based jurisdiction, know better than to use them so what is going on?
John…
Did you see where this Offshore Alert editor is asking for the US Dept. of Justice to take over this RCIPS investigation…
Because, according to him, from his inside information, Bush has broken US laws by accepting extortion money on US soil but offers no evidence of this, his very own words, ‘alleged extortion’.
What more proof do we need that this RCIPS investigation has turned up one big, fat 0 ?
Bush claims that this money was owed to him for legitimate real estate services rendered…
The person who owed and paid some of this money has said nothing publicly to either refute or deny this claim and he is the only person who can.
This is obviously a civil dispute over a real estate deal.
How did this turn into a political corruption investigation…
And why is Baines taking so long to wrap it up ?
There is some very strange goings-on here.