Topic: Canover Watson

Convicted fraudster Canover Watson, 45, began serving his seven-year prison sentence Friday on charges of conspiracy to defraud, fraud on the government, breach of trust and conflict of interest following a Grand Court verdict in the CarePay trial.

Millionaire Caymanian businessman Canover Watson was sentenced to seven years in prison Friday, one day after he was found guilty of five out of six criminal charges against him in connection with the CarePay hospital contract investigation.

A Cayman Islands Grand Court jury found Canover Watson guilty Thursday on five of the six criminal charges against him, following a two-month trial.

Other two charges still being deliberated

One man and six women must now decide the fate of Cayman Islands businessman Canover Watson, charged in six separate counts related to alleged corrupt acts involving the award of a public hospital system patient services contract.

Two months of testimony in a prosecution that called more than two dozen witnesses can be boiled down to a concept that a Cayman Islands Grand Court justice called “dead easy,” jurors in the criminal trial of Canover Watson heard Tuesday.

Cayman Islands prosecutors described Canover Watson last week as an unscrupulous businessman, a backroom wheeler-dealer who used his position on a high-profile public agency to enrich himself, his business partner Jeffrey Webb, and perhaps others.

Crown prosecutors began closing speeches Thursday morning in the criminal trial of Canover Watson, who is accused in connection with a scheme to defraud the Cayman Islands government in relation to the CarePay patient swipe-card contract for the public hospital system.

A sum of $250,000 deposited in a Fidelity Bank account via the Cayman Islands Football Association through another local company was never returned to the company that paid it, Canover Watson testified Tuesday during his criminal trial.

An admittedly bogus 31-page contract was used to support US$1.8 million in payments made during 2011-2012 for the expansion of the public hospital’s CarePay...

Hours before government officials signed what became known as the CarePay contract, behind-the-scenes negotiations on the five-year, US$13 million deal were still occurring, Canover Watson testified in his criminal trial last week.