An article has appeared on Caribbean News Now website and claims:

“In a decision that has been described by local media as part of an “ongoing cover up”, the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) has concluded that allegations that a former Cayman Islands governor, the attorney general and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) adviser lied to investigators about their level of involvement in an ill-fated corruption investigation are unfounded.

“However, the conclusion apparently reached by the RCIPS in response to a criminal complaint against former governor, Stuart Jack; attorney general Samuel Bulgin; and FCO advisor Larry Covington by former Scotland Yard detective Martin Bridger flies in the face of an earlier contrary view reached by London’s Metropolitan Police and a statement by former Cayman Islands police commissioner Stuart Kernohan.”

To read the whole story go to: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-Cayman-Islands-police-said-to-be-covering-up-for-British-officials-22307.html

We sent the link to the above story to John Evans. Evans is the journalist that sparked off the whole Tempura investigation into Cayman Islands alleged police corruption that the Caribbean News Now story is about. The following is Evans reply and we understand he has also sent it to Caribbean News Now:

I don’t know who wrote this ….

I don’t know who wrote this but it leaves out some not insignificant facts.

I was the participating informant who carried out the search of the Cayman Net News offices on 3 September 2007. The object of that search, which was supervised by Chief Superintendent John Jones, was to determine whether or not certain documents existed – nothing more. The reason for my search was that even at that early stage there were already serious doubts about the accuracy of allegations being made by one of my colleagues concerning a corrupt relationship between the owner of Cayman Net News and a senior police officer.

I left Grand Cayman at the end of July 2008 and during the last six years have conducted a detailed investigation into Mr Bridger’s operation.

The conclusions of that investigation so far include the fact that Mr Bridger’s superiors at the Metropolitan Police (Met) in London were fully aware of the searches at the time they took place. Copies of documents released to me by lawyers acting for the Met confirming this were supplied to the RCIPS as part of their investigation into these complaints. Is Mr Bridger now trying to claim that his bosses in London failed to tell him what was going on?

As for the, “if we had known what was really going this would all have been over in weeks,” claim? It just doesn’t make sense. I was in regular face-to-face contact with Mr Bridger’s team from the beginning of September 2007 to the end of July 2008. By November 2007 there was more than enough evidence available to conclude that the allegations they had been sent over to investigate were unfounded. Despite this there was no suggestion of packing up and going back to a cold British winter, quite the opposite because at that point the team started fishing for other things to investigate. You can pretty much judge the state of play at the time by the conduct of Mr Bridger’s deputy. Despite having a wife and family back in the UK he was partying his brains out having an affair with a blond divorcee who was working on Grand Cayman.

Material supplied to me by the Met even shows that in January 2008 they were making plans to extend the investigation almost indefinitely by employing two private contractors. One of those taken on was Mr Bridger himself. On retirement from the Met in April 2008 he was re-employed in his old job but now as a £787(roughly US$1250)-a-day plus perks private contractor and he in turn employed three other investigators, all of them former Met officers. The other contractor was BGP Global, a company headed by Alan Cammidge who is a former colleague of Mr Bridger from the Met’s now-discredited CIB3 anti-corruption unit. BGP eventually made around £1million (roughly US$1.6million) from the investigations.

At the beginning of 2009 the mounting cost of the investigation coupled with the lack of any tangible results was the subject of an official audit. Significant information, including accurate details of the recruitment of the contractors, was withheld from the Auditor General. Based on a very large amount of material (including the original drafts of the audit report) supplied to me under FOI it is quite clear that strenuous efforts were made to cover up how much Mr Bridger’s investigation was costing the people of the Cayman Islands and dumb down that audit. In retaliation for his unwelcome interest in this matter the Auditor General’s contract was not renewed in 2010 – effectively he was sacked for interfering.

Based on the material I hold, repeated requests have been made for this audit to be re-opened and completed. Despite the fact that there is clear evidence of criminal interference in the original process nobody wants to get involved in this. Even when I followed Mr Bridger’s example and approached the Met all I got in reply was, “As you are aware, there are complex legal proceedings underway in the Cayman Islands; these need to run their course.” They didn’t even investigate my complaint.

Unfounded allegations like those outlined in this story, and a previous complaint which Mr Bridger refuses to release to the media, are simply being made to muddy the waters. Yes, there has been a cover up here but not an official one involving the RCIPS, the FCO or any of the people named above. The real cover up relates to the actual conduct of these investigations and why over CI$20+million have so far been wasted on them. Why is an operation that had reached its logical conclusion nearly seven years ago still draining money out of the Cayman Islands? Whatever the answer it is certainly not the alleged fact that the investigating officers had somehow not been fully briefed.

Mr Bridger is frequently quoted as saying things along the lines of, “I always acted in good faith.” Well that’s not what a leading judge, Justice Peter Cresswell, said at the end of 2008. Cresswell described the conduct of one part of the investigations as, “the gravest abuse of process.” In a 124-judgment he revealed that some of my witness statements had been selectively misquoted in order to obtain warrants, the victim of these actions subsequently received $1.25million in damages and shortly afterwards Mr Bridger’s contract was not renewed. When the Cresswell ruling was referred to the RCIPS as a disciplinary matter they protected Mr Bridger and his deputy by first trying to ignore the complaint then rejecting it on the grounds that the officers had left both the RCIPS and the Cayman Islands. Is Mr Bridger now saying that the same police force that covered up for him four years ago has now turned round and changed its mind?

I was there and I can say without any reservations that in November 2007 what is commonly referred to now as Operation Tempura had achieved it original objectives and was at the point where it should have been wound up. Why it wasn’t is still a matter of speculation but I would respectfully suggest that the prospect of earning £787-a-day living on a sunny Caribbean Island might have had something to do with it.

END

IMAGE: Stuart Jack