After the revelations from the CONCACAF lawsuit I spoke about in my Editorial yesterday that revealed the current President of the Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA), Bruce Blake, had signed the questionable loan deal to CIFA from Cartan Tours, he said in an interview with CNS, he knew nothing about it as it was all dealt with by Canover Watson.

Watson is currently serving a seven year jail sentence in an unrelated matter but was CIFA Treasurer at the time.

In the CNS story Blake said “he had trusted Watson to deal with the issue regarding the Cartan loan”. The loan later turned into a gift.

He also said he had no idea Watson and Jeff Webb had been transferring funds to and from CIFA accounts in connection with money scammed from the hospital contract, and he also had no idea why they may have been taking money from local football.

Blake now appears to be a knight in shining armour riding a white horse as he is determined to find out how much is exactly missing and will do his best to recover the funds.

‘“I’m now putting my money into CIFA to keep the operation going and keep the leagues running,’ Blake said, adding that CIFA was now taking steps to do a proper investigation to find out what has happened and, if necessary, take legal action to get its money back.”

To read the whole story go to: https://caymannewsservice.com/2016/02/blake-denies-knowledge-of-frauds/comment-page-1/

That’s all very well but this is a different Bruce Blake now from the one last year who was adamant nothing was wrong. The CIFA accounts were all properly audited and he wasn’t concerned at all the government were not providing any funds to CIFA because of the many red flags being raised about their accounts. CIFA had plenty of money coming in from other sources.

It is remarkable, however, that Blake who professes his love of local football will not resign along with all the other board members who were there during Webb and Watson’s tenure. Then the government has said they will provide their annual hand out to them.

It is remarkable that the Cayman Islands football teams themselves haven’t demanded the resignation of Blake and his board. Instead they reappointed them at CIFA’s last Annual General Meeting just a few months ago.

As for the CIFA Audits. These have been questioned by one of Cayman’s leading Auditor’s especially why at least three different professionals have been used and why no one spotted the red flags.

Blake admitted Watson and Webb were close friends. Blake was with Webb when Webb was arrested in Switzerland. He said he trusted them.

Now we have to trust Blake.

Good Knight.