Former airport accountant turns to courts

(CNS): The troubles at the Cayman Islands Airports Authority are continuing as the former financial controller at the government authority is seeking the court’s intervention in the decision by the board to sack her last year. Shelley Ware has filed a judicial review stating that she wants her job back and a finding from the courts that not only was there no misconduct on her part but that she was an exemplary employee. Following an internal audit conducted by one of the directors on the board, Ware was fired by the board chair, Richard Arch, in December 2012 after more than three years at the airport. Ware states in her application that she was never given an opportunity to respond and that the chair did not have the authority to sack her in the first place.

Ware disputes the findings published in the internal auditing report, which was leaked to North Side MLA Ezzard Miller, who passed the document to CNS earlier this year. The report listed a number of allegations against the former airport senior accountant and found that she was guilty of serious misconduct. As a result the board fired her from the authority.

However, Ware states that the board did not have the authority or the grounds to fire her and she was never given a chance to answer the allegations or appear before the board to defendherself.

In her law suit Ware asks the judge to overturn the decision, order her re-instatement and remove any suggestion of misconduct from her record, as well as pay her the salary and pension benefits that she would have earned since last November.

Since the report was leaked, the CEO at the airport, Jeremy Jackson, was also fired and Kerith McCoy has been appointed as the Acting Chief Executive Officer.

The internal audit documented a number of serious issues at the airport, including the misuse of the government credit cards, boozy lunches paid for by the public purse and cases of unresolved theft.

However, following the leaking of the report other information has also been leaked which shows that the board chair and other directors are conflicted as they have direct business interests at the airport and that they have not necessarily removed themselves from meetings or proceedings when the board was discussing issues that could impact those businesses. In addition, the board chair had refused to sign a document regarding conflicts for the preparation of the airports regular annual accounts, as is required by international accounting standards.

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