FIFA, the international governing body of world football, has taken an interest in last month’s arrest of Cayman Islands businessman Canover Watson in connection with an alleged corruption and money laundering probe.
Mr. Watson, 43, the managing director of Admiral Administration financial services company in Cayman and the former recipient of the Young Caymanian Leadership Award, also serves as a member of FIFA’s financial monitoring panel in FIFA’s North and Central American and Caribbean region, the region known as CONCACAF.
FIFA audit and compliance committee chairman Domenico Scala told the U.S. Associated Press on Saturday that Mr. Watson had been contacted about the case.
“We have asked Canover Watson whether he can share with the audit committee any additional information,” said Mr. Scala, also noting that the request for information was in agreement with FIFA’s ethics committee.
The audit and compliance committee is responsible for keeping an eye on FIFA’s annual global revenues of more than US$1 billion and its nearly US$1.5 billion in fund reserves.
The audit committee was formed in 2012 with Mr. Scala as its head to implement anti-corruption efforts at world football’s governing body following scandals that led to the resignation of former CONCACAF chief Jack Warner who resigned in 2011.
Cayman Islands businessman Jeff Webb has been president of the CONCACAF regional body since 2012. CONCACAF indicated on Saturday that the organization was also aware of the probe involving Mr. Watson and was awaiting further details.
For the Cayman Islands, the revelation that FIFA is now looking into a probe that began two years ago as an audit of a local hospital system contract meant that international attention was likely to be focused on the islands in the coming months.
The Anti-Corruption Unit of the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service arrested Mr. Watson in late August on suspicion of violations of the territory’s Anti-Corruption Law, specifically sections 13 [breach of trust], 17 [abuse of office] and 19 [conflict of interest], and on suspicion of money laundering. Mr. Watson has been released on police bail and is due to report back to the RCIPS Sept. 29. He has not been charged with any crimes.
The investigation involves the award of a multi-million dollar contract by the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority in 2010 to a company called AIS Cayman for the use of swipe-card billing technology at the public hospital system. Mr. Watson was the chairman of the Health Services Authority board of directors at the time the contract was awarded.
Section 19 of the Anti-Corruption Law [2008] refers to decisions taken by public officers in which they have a “personal interest” where those decisions are not disclosed and/or where the public officer “votes or otherwise takes part in proceedings of the government entity related to such [personal] interest.” To do so is an offense under the Anti-Corruption Law, carrying a prison term of up to five years.
Mr. Watson has denied the corruption related allegations in a statement sent to the Compass last month. He has not returned to work at Admiral Administration and is on a “leave of absence,” according to company officials.
The Cayman Compass contacted Mr. Watson’s attorney for comment regarding the FIFA committee statement but received no response by press time.
For some months, the Cayman Islands Anti-Corruption Commission has been looking into certain aspects of the award and implementation of the contract the public hospital system signed with the local arm of a Caribbean company for a patient swipe card system known as CarePay.
The contract for the swipe card system was awarded on Dec. 21, 2010, to AIS Cayman Ltd., an agent of St. Lucia-based Health Adjudication Systems, for a five-year period. According to the contract, AIS Cayman Ltd. was to receive US$1.37 million for initiating and implementing the computerized card swipe system. In addition, it would receive from the Cayman Islands National Insurance Company and the government Health Services Authority 4 percent of the value of every swipe card transaction approved for payment.
The value of the 4 percent charge on the swipe card payments, according to contract records, would have been around US$2.4 million per year.
Related Videos
