Archive for February, 2009

TAB says fuel issue resolved

(CNS): In the wake of the auditor general’s report that raised concerns about mismanagement of public money regarding a fuel reimbursement system at Pedro St James, the CEO of the Tourism Attraction Board (TAB) has said that the problem was resolved and the practice of staff using the Savannah account for their own vehicles stopped long before the AG conducted the investigation, which he notes was requested by the  board.

“The practice of Pedro St. James staff charging gas to Pedro’s account at the Savannah Texaco Starmart for use in their personal vehicles was first discovered by the TAB senior management in January 2007. Following an internal review of the practice, it was determined that it was inadequate and not in keeping with accepted practices within other government agencies,” Gilbert Connolly told CNS.

“The board immediately made the decision in February 2007 to  issue a directive to all Pedro staff to stop the practice of charging gas to the Pedro account and to introduce a more effective and accountable system.”

Connolly explained that the new system requires all fuel purchases to be authorised in advance, with a printed name and signature, as well as an explanation for the purchase. “In May 2007, the TAB introduced a Staff Handbook and Policy Manual which contained an updated and more efficient Mileage Reimbursement Policy and System to deal with any employee who had to use his/her personal vehicle to perform work-related duties,” he added.

Connolly said that the TAB took corrective action to stop the inappropriate practice and to introduce its new Mileage Reimbursement Policy before the auditor general was even asked by the board to conduct an investigation.

“On May 28, 2007 I signed a Letter of Engagement with the auditor general to conduct a special investigation into the fuel charging practice. The main reason for requesting the auditor general to conduct this specialinvestigation was to have an independent body assess the evidence of the case which had been collected and to review the procedure used to charge gas to the Pedro account,” Connolly added.

He noted that the Special Report essentially confirms his own assessment that there was a lack of proper policies and procedures to control the practice by staff to charge gas to the Pedro account and allowed for the possible abuse of the account.

“It is important to note that the Special Report delivered by the auditor general on January 30, 2009 did not find any evidence that fraud was intendedor committed by Pedro staff in the charging of gas. Equally important, there were no recommendations for any disciplinary action to be taken against the general manager or any other member of staff involved in this investigation,” Connolly said, adding that it made no suggestions for any specific corrective action be taken to further improve policies and procedures currently in place.

However, Connolly said that a directive has been issued to the general manager to repay the TAB the total amount of CI$3,869.00, which is the amount calculated by the auditor general to be in excess of the Motor Vehicle Allowance he should have received for the period investigated.

“Furthermore, the general manager has been formally reprimanded and served with a written warning for misconduct, which includes a proviso that any repeat of any unauthorised charge of gasoline to the Pedro account by him or his staff will result in the termination of his employment,” Connolly said.

General Manager Carson Ebanks has cooperated with the disciplinary measures imposed and has accepted full responsibility for the inadequate gas charging procedure that was implemented under his management, Connolly said. He added that once the problem was identified the board was proactive and followed proper procedures to resolve the issues and eliminate any further loss to Government.

“Given that the matter was referred to the Auditor General Office, it is unfortunate that the report failed to fully recognize these corrective efforts undertaken by the TAB,” he added, stating that it was regrettable that report’s findings have been sensationalized in the press and by others to reflect negatively on the entire staff at Pedro. “The vast majority of staff at Pedro St. James is hard working and committed to the mission of making Pedro St James a national historical site we can all enjoy and be proud of,” Connolly said.  

Auditor General Dan Duguay released the report to the Legislative Assembly making it a public document on 4 February. Explaining his decision to CNS last week, Duguay said while the sum in question was not a significant amount in terms of overall government spending, it is still public money and the mismanagement of public funds is an issue that cannot be covered up.

“The reason why we decided to make this report public by sending it to the Legislative Assembly is because we believe all public expenditure should be scrutinized and it is important that the management of public funds is improved upon,” Duguay said. “It is not a large amount but it is an example of how things can be mismanaged and we are trying to emphasis better controls.”

The report found that following the writing off of the company truck in a road accident in 2004 staff members were allowed to fill up on fuel at a company account established at Savannah Texaco. However, they were doing so without necessarily accounting for their use of the fuel and were able to fill up their vehicles with just a signature. During the period when this system of reimbursement was being used fuel costs increased by 177%.

“The process was conducted in a haphazard manner with employees in some instances being given only verbal approval to charge gas and not being required to provide any formal documentation or identification other than a signature at the gas station,” the report states.

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Operation Tempura case not over, says Smith

(CNS): Despite calls from the elected government to close down the protracted investigation surrounding the allegations of an unlawful entry in to the Cayman Net News offices, which has so far failed to reveal any evidence of serious wrong doing against the RCIPS, Acting Commissioner James Smith has said that the Operation Tempura investigation would continue and that it could not be closed down.

The case which has been termed Netnewsgate, which that brought Martin Bridger and his Special Police Investigation Team to the Cayman Island in the first place and recently led to CI$1.275 million being awarded in damages to Justice Alex Henderson, is a very complex case which has not ended, said Smith.

He confirmed that John Jones had recently been interviewed but he said the Chief Superintendent still remained suspended from duty on full pay as he has for the last year. He also said that the team still wanted to interview former Police Commissioner Stuart Kernohan, and he confirmed that the case against Lyndon Martin was set for trial in March. He would not, however, give anymore details of the substance of the whole investigation.

“Charges have been laid in some areas of this, enquiries are ongoing in other areas and files currently sit with the Solicitor General about how they will proceed with things in court. I don’t think it is appropriate for me to comment on speculation,” Smith said, adding that there was business to be finished regarding that incident.

He said that he would not rule in or out the possibility of Jones returning to his job, and he said that it would depend on the evidence whether he would face criminal charges or a disciplinary hearing.

In recent weeks and months, most of the elected Cabinet members have voiced their very serious concerns about this element of the investigation in terms of both the length of the enquiry – more than sixteen months — and its cost, which is in excess of $4 million, without revealing any evidence of a crime. At the most recent Cabinet press briefing, the leader of government business said that the government was no longer prepared to appropriate funds for this investigation while Bridger remained the lead investigator and with no evidence that a crime actually occurred.

The governor was forced to use his reserve powers to get the funding from the Cayman treasury to pay Justice Henderson’s damages and to acquire more money for Operation Tempura. Henderson was unlawfully arrested by Bridger and SPIT as a result of suggestions that the Judge had been making inappropriate enquiries about letters written to Net News that undermined the local judiciary.

Trying to explain the reason why the whole enquiry surrounding Net News was taking so long and costing so much, Smith said that on the face of it the incident might appear straight forward, but it had tentacles and no one could have envisaged where the investigation may have gone. But he said he did not want to speculate or comment about the enquiry as it was still ongoing. He did say that operations that begin as covert investigations, as this one did, by their very nature can take much longer to come to a conclusion.

Although Smith would not be drawn on details, it is understood that the investigation surrounds whether or not Kernohan and Jones acted inappropriately regarding Martin’s entry into the offices of Net News. Martin was at the time a journalist with the paper when, allegedly, his suspicions and those of his former colleague John Evans, were raised that the newspaper proprietor Desmond Seales could be in a corrupt relationship with Deputy Commissioner Anthony Ennis.

As a result the two journalists reported their suspicions to the police and then attempted to find evidence of these suspicions in Seales’ office by entering their work place late at night. Since then, Bridger has declared that there is no truth to the rumour of a corrupt relationship between Seales and Ennis, something which he says was apparent early in the investigation.

Bridger then switched his attention to Jones and Kernohan and the two reporters. Since October 2007, he and SPIT have been pursing the idea that the allegations by Martin were not only false but malicious and that Kernohan and Jones have misconducted themselves in some way by assisting with the search for evidence. However, it appears that that Larry Covington, who is responsible for UK Overseas Territories police services in the Caribbean, Attorney General Sam Bulgin and Governor Stuart Jack were all aware of the situation from the very beginning when Martin and Evans made the accusations against Ennis.

In two important legal rulings in February and March 2008, Chief Justice Anthony Smellie made it clear that he could see no evidence of either officer acting unlawfully and that they had a duty to investigate what they perceived to be possibly legitimate allegations. In both rulings Smellie had refused to sign warrants for Bridger to search the homes of either Kernohan or Jones because of the lack of evidence of any unlawful intent.

The onlycharges brought so far in the sixteen-month investigation into this case are those against Martin, which have already been reduced from the original 17 counts that he faced when arrested in March of last year to the two counts he will face in court next month, both of which are concerned with making false allegations against a police officer. The primary prosecution witness against Martin is believed to be Evans, who has not been charged despite supporting Martin in his suspicions that Seales was being leaked police information, possibly through Ennis.

However, Evans who now resides in the UK, has since declared that his testimony regarding the alleged unlawful entry was taken under duress, although he has not explained the circumstances of that “duress” and says he will be resisting the summons to attend Martin’s trial as a witness for the prosecution. When asked about this, Smith said he could not speculate on the importance of Evans to the case against Martin as he had simply not been involved in the investigation long enough.

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Levers denies gossip claim

(CNS): Details of the issues that form the basis of Justice Priya Levers’ tribunal, revealed in The Caymanian Compass today (12 February), suggesting she gossiped about her colleagues have been emphatically denied by the Grand Court Judge, who says that she has never made any such public allegations about other members of the judiciary. CNS has learned that Justice Levers will be filing a full response refuting the accusations against her this Friday.

The Compass states in a front page story that it has seen a summary of the issues that the tribunal will hear accusing Justice Levers of starting rumours of sexual affairs, drug use and illegal gun possession among her judicial colleagues. Levers, however, categorically denies spreading any such public gossip or accusations. The newspaper also states that the Grand Court Judge has been accused of writing a series of controversial letters to another local newspaper, Cayman Net News, bringing the judiciary into disrepute – an accusation she also denies.

“While I do not believe in trial by press, I deny these allegations, and when my evidence is revealed on Friday it will become apparent that I have not engaged in any gossip mongering,” Justice Levers has said. The Grand Court Judge, who has considerable support among the local legal community, has also stated that she did not write any letters regarding the judiciary to Net News.

Sources close to the judge have said that, while she has never condoned undignified behaviour displayed by any members of the Cayman judiciary, she has certainly never been the source of any unsavoury gossip regarding them or how they have conducted themselves. CNS also understands that the statements on the issues that the tribunal will hear have already been amended regarding the "35 areas of complaint" against her, as stated in the Compass.

The Tribunal, which will be chaired by Sir Andrew Leggatt, is due to begin public hearings on 7 May. Justice Levers will be represented by leading UK barrister Stanley Brodie QC and Cayman attorneys Anthony Akiwumi and Wade DaCosta.

Since Justice Levers was suspended from her place on the bench speculation regarding the details of the tribunal have varied widely. Recently the focus has switched to the costs involved, particularly since the tribunal awarded the justice 75% of her costs up front, a point which Justice Levers’ legal team have said is particularly significant.

Sources have also suggested that the tribunal may expose uncomfortable revelations for some members of the judiciary, as the details of the so-called rumours, which Levers denies making, are discussed in a public forum.

One local lawyer told CNS that while Levers may not be the source of the gossip, some of the accusations that have allegedly been made have circulated among the local legal community for some time. If any them were to be proven, the local judiciary, which is already reeling from the unlawful arrest of Henderson, could face further serious disruption. 

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