TCI Commission of Inquiry Outlines Massive Corruption and Misrule

by Larry Smith

In 2005 our then prime minister, Perry Christie, was invited to open the new legislative building in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Mr Christie said the parliament would be a forum for "bold and innovative ideas", and he was certainly right about that.

In fact, the ideas were so bold they led straight to a British-appointed commission of inquiry into corruption and misrule that handed a "wide-ranging" preliminary report to the governor this past weekend. The recommendations will not be published immediately, and a final report is not due until the end of April.

The commission was appointed last year to inquire into corruption among members of the legislature. It is led by a British jurist (Sir Robin Auld), who took part in the 1967 inquiry into casino gambling in the Bahamas. Four weeks of public hearings at the Regent Palms Hotel on Provo ended on February 11, and the commission is now working on its report in London.

But Chief Minister Michael Misick saw the writing on the wall, and did not even wait for the interim report. He announced his resignation in mid-February - with effect from the end of this month. And in a party meeting this past Saturday, former immigration minister Galmore Williams was elected to lead the Peoples National Party, and will presumably take over the premiership next month.

How different are the present circumstances from those halcyon days of 2006, when a slew of PLP ministers led by Perry Christie partied down at Misick's celebrated wedding to sexy American starlet LisaRaye McCoy at the ultra-luxurious Amanyara Resort. The best man at the wedding was none other than Obie Wilchcombe, a cousin of Misick's, who was then our minister of tourism. 

Misick became chief minister in 2003, when the PNP won 8 out of 13 seats in the legislature, and he led the party to an even bigger victory in 2007, almost wiping out the once dominant Peoples Democratic Movement. When he was first elected his declared worth was only $50,000, but Misick told the commission recently that he now had assets of $23 million plus debts of $20 million. 

Information about Misick's finances did not come easily. According to the commission's chief counsel, Alex Milne, "when he gave evidence (the premier) was at times obtuse, unforthcoming and verging on the truculent...The total that we could not explain going into (his) bank accounts was $10.4 million, which is a lot of money."

Misick also vastly inflated his official remuneration. The cost of the premier's office rose from $170,000 in 2003 to over $4 million today, a sum which includes a bigger salary than that of the British prime minister. But those free-spending days are over. Misick himself acknowledged recently that he was "mired in allegations of corruption and scandal so deep" he had no choice but to step down.

The premier has criticised the commission proceedings as "far-reaching and intrusive" - a fact confirmed by the recent banning on Radio Turks  & Caicos of a controversial song by local performer Jack Nasty. The song features a chorus that says "Everybody's Business Getting Out", and reports are that the CD has been flying off the shelves since the commission hearings.

"Everybody's business" includes testimony from LisaRaye, who is engaged in a highly publicised and stormy breakup with Misick that has involved threats and allegations of assault by both parties. McCoy filed for divorce last year after Misick was accused of raping one of her girlfriends, although Misick claimed the sex was consensual. He also fathered a child with a mistress during his short-lived marriage to McCoy.

"Everybody's business" also includes the failure of government ministers to declare their financial interests as required by law; the corrupt sale of crown land to foreigners; and millions of dollars in payoffs to the governing party from private interests - much of it stashed in secret bank accounts thousands of miles away in Belize.

These accounts disbursed large amounts of irregular cash to the premier and other top PNP leaders with no accountability whatsoever, according to evidence given at the commission. In one case over $100,000 was paid by the PNP to LisaRaye's California-based hair stylist. And Misick himself received millions from the party and directly from investors.

In closing remarks to the inquiry, chief counsel Milne described the PNP as "a multimillion-dollar enterprise, bought and paid for by a small number of rich individuals, many if not most of whom appear to have prospered under the current government. It acts, in effect if not by design, as a conduit for large amounts of unregulated and undeclared cash from individuals to politicians."

Milne also showed that Misick had borrowed many millions more from a variety of indivduals and investment companies seeking to do business in the territory, with no evidence of any effort to repay the money. "Copious evidence" was also produced that cabinet decisions were riddled with conflict of interest.

"The Commission has seen evidence of massive sums of money being injected into a small political economy which cannot possibly be justified by the number of voters. The party accounts appear to operate as a slush fund for the senior members into which they could apparently dip at will."

Only about 36,000 people live in the Turks & Caicos, which has less than 7,000 voters spread across 15 constituencies. Most government revenue comes from land sales and from the 200,000 tourists who visit each year. The TCI is a self-governing British Overseas Territory that used to be administered by the Bahamas, until we became independent in 1973.

"Money has, in my submission, distorted and corroded the political fabric of this territory," Milne continued. "It has  undermined the claim of the current administration to any form of legitimacy or respect. Small-scale graft has been extrapolated to monstrous proportions by an influx of monies previously not seen. The road back from this state of affairs will be difficult."

However, the commission is not a police inquiry and its hearings were not a trial. While its final report will make recommendations to the British authorities, it will not decide what happens to individuals or to the territory as a whole. "Those tasks will fall to those who come after us," according to Sir Robin, the commission chairman. "The most I can do…is to recommend further and more searching investigations by the police and/or some other public enforcement body."

Nevertheless, Anthony Hall, a Washington-based lawyer and columnist with roots in both the Bahamas and TCI, says the commission has uncovered evidence "of what amounts to a criminal syndicate masquerading as a local government. And this should compel Sir Robin to make emergency recommendations to mitigate our financial and reputational losses, to say nothing of the growing contingent liabilities of the British government."

Meanwhile, the TCI Free Press (published by Bahamian Gilbert Morris, who has a resume a mile long on Wikipedia and claims once to have been a Carmelite monk) speaks glowingly of the strong Bahamian connection among the defence team hired by Misick:

"Edward Fitzgerald QC has tried some of the most stupendous cases in recent British history and is married to an aristocrat; Maurice Glinton is the Cambridge-educated intellectual heavyweight; Raynard Rigby is from an old line family from the educational establishment of Turks and Caicos and a potential future prime minister of the Bahamas; and Damian Gomez is the son of the former archbishop and himself a former supreme court judge."

Most observers see three possible outcomes from the commission's report - criminal prosecutions, a general election, or suspension of the constitution. This last is something the British were forced to do once before. In 1985, former chief minister Norman Saunders and his development minister Stafford Missick, (a one-time official of the Bahamas Central Bank), were arrested in Miami on drug trafficking and bribery charges. They were both convicted and imprisoned in the US. A revamped constitution was restored two years later,

Tough Call cannot understand why there is so little coverage in the Bahamian media of this salacious political drama that is unfolding almost right before our eyes - especially when there are said to be as many Turks Islanders living in the Bahamas as there are remaining in TCI itself. After all, there is nothing like a commission of inquiry to throw light on secret government, and transcripts of the hearings are easily available online.

According to the Internet mailing list, Turks & Ciacos Informers, "Alex Milne, counsel to the commission, has stated that “Money…has undermined the claim of the current administration to any form of legitimacy or respect”. The 64 thousand dollar question then is: What does one do with an illegitimate government?"

Comments

[Calnan Weech]

At a recent dinner this topic was discussed but we were all at a loss as to the current status. It is unfortunate that the matter has not received more attention in our local papers. Thank you as your article has laid out the facts very clearly and makes further discussion more meaningful & allows for more fact-based opinions.

[Erasmus Folly]

Can we re-administer it?