Committee chair says suspension ‘temporary’
Stating that the presumption of innocence applies in this case, the head of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee on Monday announced the temporary suspension of Cayman Islands businessman Canover Watson from the committee pending a criminal investigation related to him.
Mr. Watson’s attorney, Ben Tonner, was contacted Tuesday for comment on his client’s behalf. The Cayman Compass had not received a response by press time.
Mr. Watson, 43, the managing director of Admiral Administration financial services company in Cayman and the former recipient of the Young Caymanian Leadership Award, is a member of FIFA’s financial monitoring panel in the North and Central American and Caribbean region (CONCACAF).
Mr. Watson is also on an unspecified leave of absence from Admiral Administration.
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 was released on police bail and is due to report back to the RCIPS on Sept. 29. He has not been charged with any crimes. The corruption-related allegations are not believed to be connected to Mr. Watson’s activities on behalf of FIFA, the governing organization of world football.
The criminal investigation involves the award of a multimillion-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.
The head of FIFA’s Audit and Compliance Committee, Domenico Scala, told Reuters news service Monday that Mr. Watson had been relieved of his duties while the investigation continues.
“The chairman has decided to temporarily relieve, until further notice, Canover Watson, to whom the presumption of innocence applies, of his duties on the FIFA Audit and Compliance Committee,” a FIFA statement reads. “This should not be regarded as routine procedure because cases like this or of this nature must always be assessed on their individual merits.
“After a preliminary clarification of the facts of the case and the allegations of the Cayman Island[s] investigating authorities against Canover Watson, no connection with football and/or his role at association level has been established at this stage.”
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.
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.
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