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CoP:Tempura not truth v lies
(CNS): The questions surrounding who knew what and when in the endless saga of Operation Tempura may never be answered as the commissioner of police (CoP) points out many of the questions over what happened relate to interpretation. Limited in what he can say because of court orders banning the release of certain information relating to Tempura by a high court judge, David Baines said that the accounts given by former CoP Stuart Kernohan, former chief superintendent John Jones, then governor Stuart Jack, Attorney General Sam Bulgin and the OT Security adviser, Larry Covington, were all given “honestly and with integrity” and the issue is not a black and white case of lies versus truths.
The comments come from Baines following a miscommunication between the senior police officer and CNS over responses to questions sent to him at the beginning of August. Baines sent his answers to an incorrect email address, and despite efforts by CNS to chase the commissioner about the missing answers, we were never told that a response had been sent.
Nevertheless, CNS is now in possession of the response from Baines, who explained that although Jones and Kernohan both gave evidence during the trial of Lyndon Martin over the covert entry into Net News, where he worked at the time, stating that the entry had been approved by their superiors, it does not necessarily mean they were lying. Baines also said that just because the two men were presented as crown witnesses does not mean that he agreed they either were or were not witnesses of truth.
“The legal complexities make such simplistic contrasts inappropriate,” he told CNS.
“I will say that I have found the accounts given by Stuart Kernohan, John Jones, the former Governor Jack, AG Bulgin and Larry Covington to be given honestly and with integrity,” the commissioner stated. “I have no justification, reason, nor evidence to doubt the integrity of any of those concerned. At the centre of any variation in the accounts given is ' who was aware, who approved and who authorized the entry into the Net News Office'. It is clear that some (not all) were made aware of the proposed entry and that this was understood and interpreted as approval or authorization. That interpretation whilst honestly believed could never be the case as all operational and tactical decisions are the legal responsibility of the Commissioner of Police,” he added.
Baines stated that although he did not interview Martin Bridger, the original senior investigating officer on Tempura, or see the evidence that Bridger now claims he has indicating that the three officials were aware of Kernohan’s intended course of action, he found there was no reason to doubt what they said.
Baines stated in his response to CNS questions that he had made a full review of the allegations made by Bridger and compared them with the original documents, evidence and files as originally recorded. He said these documents are protected from disclosure or comment under a court order and explained that this is why he cannot not divulge any more details of why he arrived at the decision he did.
He further noted that the governor, the attorney general or the legal advisor to the OTs did not have any statutory role in making and authorizing police tactics or actions. He said their role was to provide advice and counsel, not to authorize.
The questions surrounding the events were stirred up by the revelations from SIO Bridger that he had been under the impression that Kernohan and Jones had been on what he described as “a frolic of their own” when they colluded with John Evans and Lyndon Martin, both journalists at Net News at the time, to look for evidence of alleged corruption in office of their boss, the late Desmond Seales.
The former discredited Tempura investigator, who is now embroiled in several legal battles to expose what he claims is the truth about the investigation, said that if he had been aware that Kernohan and Jones had consulted and received what they believed was authorization from the FCO officials and the AG, he would not have pursued the long and costly enquiry that the local tax payer is still financing.
CoP silent on Tempura ‘truth’
(CNS): As the governor refuses to release documents relating to the ongoing fallout of Operation Tempura, the police boss, David Baines, has also refused to answer questions about his investigation into the conduct of Attorney General Sam Bulgin, former governor Stuart Jack and Larry Covington, the UK’s OT security advisor during the ill-fated probe. Although former police commissioner Stuart Kernohan and former chief superintendent John Jones both indicated under oath, when presented by the crown as witnesses of truth, that the three UK officials were aware of the covert entry into a local newspaper, the current police commissioner has decided they didn't know about the planned alleged break-in. ButBaines has not explained his findings or indicated if the RCIPS will be pursuing Kernohan and Jones for perjury.
Baines’ decision to dismiss the report of possible misconduct by Jack, Covington and Bulgin seems at odds with the position the authorities had previously taken over the evidence given by Jones and Kernohan. Baines is also understood to have dismissed the allegations that the senior officials did not reveal what they knew about the plans to look for evidence of police corruption in the Cayman Net News offices without interviewing anyone involved.
The latest twist in the Tempura internal police investigation about who knew what and when regarding what the lead investigator of the ill-fated enquiry, Martin Bridger, claims he believed was a break-in at a local newspaper office has raised serious questions which have not been answered by the RCIPS.
Although Baines said that Jack, Covington and Bulgin were all exonerated, he has not explained why it is that neither Kernohan nor Jones have been pursued for perjury after they had both alleged that their bosses knew all about the plans to look for evidence in relation to allegations of RCIPS corruption in the office of the late Desmond Seales, owner of Net News.
The men revealed the chain of events under oath, as crown witnesses during the trial of Lyndon Martin who was charged with burglary in relation to the alleged break-in to the Net News offices and perverting the course of justice in 2009.
Both men are also understood to have documented evidence that the plan to use reporters from the paper to find possible evidence before the RCIPS took official action against an alleged security leak was discussed at the highest level on a number of occasions.
With Baines' categorical opinion, despite what appears to be a limited investigation, that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the then governor, the UK’s OT security advisor and the attorney general, there are a number of anomalies that the RCIPS boss is refusing to answer.
Martin Bridger is still seeking to demonstrate to the Cayman public that everything he did during his time heading up the probe was based on legal advice given by representatives of the AG’s chambers and the governor’s office and basedon what those men had told him, and has raised his own doubts about what they knew.
Bridger says he became aware only towards the end of his time in Cayman that both Kernohan and Jones could have evidence that supported their claims that Jack, Covington and Bulgin all knew how the RCIPS management intended to handle the corruption allegations in the first instance before a decision was made to call in Scotland Yard.
Bridger now claims that he had always assumed from the start of the Tempura investigation that Jones and Kernohan “were on a frolic of their own” but if, as they claim, they had told Jack or Covington or Bulgin or all three, he would have packed up and left Cayman two weeks after he arrived. This then raises the question of who really is to blame for a probe, which found nothing of substance but cost the tax payer millions of dollars.
As a result of his own mounting suspicions about who did or did not tell him the truth when he was heading up the enquiry, Bridger filed a complaint with his former bosses in the case, the Metropolitan police, as he said if Kernohan and Jones were telling the truth this meant the UK officials in Cayman had misled not just him but Scotland Yard as well.
As a result, the Met handed over the enquiry to Baines but he exonerated Jack, Covington and Bulgin, but sources say this was without interviewing Bridger, Jones or Kernohan. Baines blamed Bridger for not turning up to an interview with the evidence he claimed he had. However, given that Bridger is fighting the authorities here to use this evidence and other important evidence collected during Tempura in his own legal battles against Kernohan, he said he had concerns about the terms on which such meetings could take place.
As obvious conflicts over the management and direction of Tempura continue, the governor is also pressing ahead with her fight on behalf of the UK office in Cayman — another legal battle to make sure the lid stays firmly closed on the file holding other details about the bungled enquiry. But the latest twists continue to fuel public concerns that the authorities are conspiring to cover up incompetence, mismanagement or some other potentially embarrassing action relating to the issue, which has dragged on for seven years.
Although CNS has submitted a number of questions to the RCIPS about the parts played by the various characters in the enquiry prior to the arrival of Bridger and his Scotland Yard team, they have been ignored. The commissioner has failed to state how his internal probe has concluded that Jack, Covington and Bulgin knew nothing at all about the covert entry and how that sits with the evidence given by both Kernohan and Jones in court when they were presented as crown witnesses of truth.
ICO: Release Tempura report
(CNS): More than two years after a freedom of information request was made to the governor’s office and after a drawn out courtroom battle, the acting information commissioner has ordered that a report relating to Operation Tempura be released into the public domain. Following an order by the courts that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) re-examine a new submission from the governor’s office over the documents, Jan Liebaers found that – except for a single segment on page 13 of the complaint – the records were not exempted under the Freedom of Information Law and ordered the office to release the controversial report about the bungled internal police operation.
The ongoing saga of Operation Tempura is still costing the Cayman tax payer as the governor’s office continues to fight to keep a lid on details of the investigation and in particular a complaint made by the leading investigative officer of the discredited probe, Martin Bridger.
Since this request was made, information about the documents has leaked into the public domain, raising more questions, not about the visiting UK cops sent to Cayman to investigate alleged corruption in the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, but the role of former Cayman governor Stuart Jack, the UK’s overseas territories security advisor Larry Covington and Cayman’s Attorney General Samuel Bulgin.
Accusations that these men knew all along about a clandestine entry into the office of a local newspaper to look for evidence of corruption is now at the heart of the issue of the Tempura fall-out, along with allegations in this complaint of cover-ups and lies and about how the costly internal investigation was managed. Accusations about the judiciary and inconsistencies by the governor’s office and the legal department are also believed to form part of the allegations in the complaint.
Once again the governor’s office has 45 days to release the documents, which three governors have now fought to keep hidden from the public view — Stuart Jack, Duncan Taylor and the current governor, Helen Kilpatrick. The governor can, however, once again appeal to the courts and continue the costly endeavour of keeping the document secret.
In his ruling Liebaers said that although the judge who heard the judicial review of the original ICO decision to release the documents, Acting Justice Sir Alan Moses had narrowed the matters in question to a review of whether or not the documents were exempt under section 20. Nevertheless, the information commissioner revealed that the governor’s office came up with more exemptions in its new submission, which he refused to consider.
“Despite the explicit, singular focus of the current reconsideration the Governor’s Office also asks me to consider additional exemptions which it claims are relevant, namely the exemptions in sections 16(b)(i), 16(b)(ii) and 17((b)(ii),” he wrote in his ruling. “I will not consider the new exemptions raised for the following reasons. Firstly, this reconsideration stems directly from the Judge’s unambiguous Order, which is very clear to the effect that my reconsideration should only be concerned with the application of section 20(1)(d).”
Liebaers emphasised the importance in this case of the public interest. The documents in question relate to a report on the reasons why Duncan Taylor, the governor at the time, dismissed a complaint made by the senior investigating officer and an attorney on the Tempura case.
“The allegations in the instant case were not merely of concern to the complainant but to the public in the Cayman Islands,” Liebaers writes. “The public … was entitled to know that the summary dismissal was the result of a conclusion reached after thorough and reasoned consideration.”
The commissioner pointed out that the public interest in ensuring that the summary dismissal of the compliant was reasoned and transparent was more important than the possible damage caused by repeating the allegations in the compliant in the public domain.
“Public authorities need to be, and need to be seen to be, accountable for the decisions they make, except where the information that would be revealed is itself exempted, which it is not in this case. The matters at stake do not only relate to the personal affairs of the complainant, as the Governor’s Office claims, but are of great public concern,” Liebaers stated. “I consider the public interest in knowing the reasons for decisions made by public authorities significant, and specifically so in regard to the Governor’s response to the allegations against the judiciary.
CNS has contacted the governor’s office to enquire if the report will finally be released of if the Caymanian tax payers will be picking up the tab for another costly courtroom battle.
See Liebers full decision below or visit www.infocomm.com.
Tempura conflicts lead back to AG chambers
(CNS): The former lead officer on the costly and controversial Operation Tempura internal police investigation has pointed the finger at the Attorney General’s Chamber as the source of many of the conflicts, problems and anomalies that surrounded the corruption probe. Martin Bridger, who is increasingly speaking out about his time heading the investigation, is also one of a growing number of voices associated with the discredited investigation calling for a full public enquiry. The senior investigating officer has pointed to a number of concerns that call into question decisions made and advice given by the government lawyer's offices.
From the details surrounding the arrest of Rudy Dixon, who was police deputy commissioner at the time, and the arrest of Grand Court Judge Alex Henderson, to the employment of a UK lawyer and exactly what the governor at the time, Stuart Jack, did or did not know, Bridger said the truth is still the main casualty in the fallout from Tempura.
Speaking to CNS this week in the wake of his appearance at the OffshoreAlert conference in Miami, where Bridger was part of a panel discussion on the probe, he said the only way the truth will come out about Tempura would be via an independent and open public enquiry. Bridger has become considerably more candid about events in recent months as he emerges as the latest scapegoat from the entire botched operation and related legal issues.
Bridger complained to Scotland Yard about the events of Tempura, and although the London police force found the need for a criminal investigation, nothing happened. Conflicted as a result of its oversight of Tempura at the beginning of the investigation, Scotland Yard passed Bridger’s complaint to the FCO, which passed it to the governor at the time, Duncan Taylor, who passed it to Police Commissioner David Baines.
Baines is now in possession of that complaint and the advice of the Met stating there should be a police enquiry about the original police enquiry but he has yet to comment on whether or not he will investigate.
Bridger appeared in Miami alongside the former Cayman Islands auditor general, Dan Duguay, who also came across many barriers to the truth during his attempt to audit the costly probe, and John Evans, a former Cayman Net News reporter involved in the original allegations that triggered the probe.
During the panel session Bridger set out a number of details about the enquiry and for the first time publicly he pointed out that the arrest of the former deputy police commissioner, Rudolph Dixon, by the Tempura team was made based on the same offence and in the same way as that of Justice Alex Henderson. However, the arrest of Henderson was ruled unlawful during a judicial review by visiting judge, Sir Peter Cresswell.
Bridger explained that although the attorney general had conceded during the Henderson review that the judge’s arrest was unlawful, he did not draw the same conclusion over the Dixon arrest, even though the circumstances were the same. Not only did he allow the Tempura team to go on to charge the senior cop, but his Chambers represented the team at Dixon’s trial on misconduct charges, where he was ultimately acquitted by a jury.
At no point did anyone from the government lawyer’s office ever suggested the case had to be stopped in light of the Henderson finding.
“On the day of his arrest Dixon made an application for habeas corpus to the chief justice,” Bridger explained. “Neither the chief justice, the solicitor general, who represented us in those court proceedings, nor the attorneys for Dixon or our independent legal adviser question, at any time, the legality of the arrest … The prosecution file was reviewed by legal officers within the Attorney General’s Chambers. They recommended that Dixon be prosecuted for the offence of Misconduct in a Public Office.”
Bridger also notes that as part of a complaint made by Justice Henderson against Martin Polaine was over his eligibility to practive law in Cayman. However, the appointment of Polaine, the second lawyer on the Tempura team who replaced Andre MonDesir, was sanctioned by the AG’s office, which never informedBridger that he would need to be called to the Cayman Bar.
When Bridger was sued by Stuart Kernohan, the former police commissioner and major casualty of Tempura, he was directed by the Attorney General’s Chambers to conduct his defence in a certain way, he claims. The legal department, he was told, would then continue to represent him because the suit related to Bridger’s time as an employee of CIG. However, the AG withdrew his representation when Bridger filed his first complaint about the investigation. This is the document that remains part of an ongoing legal battle between the Information Commissioner's Office and the Office of the Cayman Islands Governor.
The biggest allegation of all, however, that Bridger now continues to make against the attorney general is that his office knew all about the controversial entry into Cayman Net News by John Evans and fellow journalist Lyndon Martin looking for evidence of corruption within the police.
Bridger says that he was never informed by the Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, then governor Stuart Jack or Larry Covington, the FCOs regional adviser security advisor, that they had been briefed about the planned covert entry into the newspaper offices. However, both Kernohan and John Jones, a senior ranking police officer who was suspended at the same time as Kernohan, and have stated in sworn evidence in court when they were presented as crown witnesses of truth, as well as in other forum, that they had briefed their UK bosses. Kernohan is also believed to have documented evidence to prove it.
Since Bridger went public about not being told that the three UK officials may have known all about the entry, theformer governor and the attorney general have both denied knowing about or approving Kernohan’s operational decision. Covington, meanwhile, remains as silent as ever on all matters.
Bridger believes the best way to find out who is telling the truth and why documents are really being covered up is for an independent public enquiry so the people of Cayman who have footed the bill for the costly probe, which has raised far more questions, problems and concerns that it ever answered, will understand where their tax dollars went and why.
He is backed by Duguay, Cayman’s former auditor general, who also encountered many problems when he attempted to audit the probe.
Duguay told CNS that he supported the call for a public enquiry, not least because the people of the Cayman Islands deserve and should know how much the investigation and its resultant processes have cost.
“The recent settlement with former Commissioner of Police Stuart Kernohan is a good example,” he said of the money being spent in secret. “Despite this being settled, the amount has not been disclosed. The people of the Cayman Islands have been asked to pay the bill and haven't even been told how much the bill is The use of such 'confidential agreements' are inappropriate in a democratic society. A public enquiry would also update the other costs of this investigation and would do a proper accounting of all the costs related to Tempura and Cealt.”
In a value for money report published in 2007 regarding Hurricane Ivan, Duguay had already warned the CIG about confidentiality agreements involving public money. He recommended that legislators make a clear resolution banning the use of confidentiality clauses unless there is a clear and genuine national security threat in not doing so.
Despite this issue, CIG has in the seven years since that report continued to enter into such agreements for many reasons, including the ones surrounding Operation Tempura, where no such threats exist.
Payoff aids Tempura cover-up
(CNS): The decision by Stuart Kernohan to settle his wrongful dismissal claim without a court hearing will aid the cover-up of the truth regarding Operation Tempura, the former senior officer on the ill-fated probe has said. Following news yesterday that the former police commissioner had accepted a secret payoff from the Cayman government, paid for from the public purse, the details of which have been sealed, Martin Bridger said Kernohan was still pursuing his now separate legal action against him. But the former Tempura boss added that he was surprised the ex-commissioner had settled when he had previously been so keen to ensure the truth was revealed and those responsible held to account.
“I am very surprised that Mr Kernohan has felt it necessary to go against his stance of ‘individuals responsible for this fiasco will not walk away without being held rightfully accountable for what they have done',” Bridger told CNS Tuesday.
Following news about Kernohan's pay-off, Bridger was asked whether he and Kernohan had settled too, as Bridger was also included in the wrongful dismissal suit and damages claim.
“I can confirm that the settlement between Mr Kernohan and the Cayman Islands government does not involve me,” he said in a statement sent by email. “I was not party to any discussions. I was not expecting Mr Kernohan to reach a settlement with the Cayman Islands government. I had no knowledge of the settlement until I read it in the Cayman press on Monday 31st March. As far as I know Kernohan is still pursuing the claim against me.”
Bridger said that on Monday he had sent documents, which he would be relying upon in his defence of the Kernohan action, to his solicitor, Shaun McCann, at Campbells.
Although Kernohan had included Bridger in his legal action against the Cayman Islands Government (CIG) authorities because of his part in the Tempura probe, in recent times Kernohan and Bridger had been moving closer together on their position regarding the investigation. Kernohan and John Jones, a former RCIPS senior officer who also fell victim to the probe, had both accepted that Bridger was never told that the covert entry into the offices of local newspaper Cayman Net News, which triggered the investigation, was authorised by the governor, the attorney general and the overseas territories security advisor.
Bridger said that Kernohan had given a statement to the Metropolitan Police in London stating that both Attorney General Samuel Bulgin and the then governor, Stuart Jack, had authorized the entry into the Net News offices. This was a position Kernohan had revealed during the 2009 trial of Lyndon Martin for burglary in connection with the alleged break-in to Net News, when Martin and his co-worker were hunting for evidence of police corruption.
Kernohan and Jones had always taken the position that they had met and discussed this option with the governor and the attorney general and the OT advisor, Larry Covington. The senior officers said their Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) bosses had authorised the decision to use staff to uncover any evidence, if it existed, pointing to a corrupt relationship between the paper and police management before taking further action.
However, despite the position of the ex-police commissioner and the now retired ex-chief superintendent that they had approval from the attorney general and the former governor, they have denied giving the top cops the nod, implying that the senior officers were lying, even though Jones was reinstatedbefore his retirement.
Bridger also states that he was led to believe by Bulgin and Jack that the senior cops were on a frolic of their own and he considered that the entry into Net News was a burglary. Bridger said Kernohan knew his investigation was conducted on the basis that he had ordered the entry without authority.
“Had I known such authority had been given then Operation Tempura would not have proceeded on the basis that it did and the events involving Judge Henderson and others would not, in all probability, have occurred," Bridger said, referring to the arrest of the high court judge which resulted in a more than $1.2 million dollar damages award to Henderson.
"Furthermore, the legal advice I received and the reviews undertaken by Assistant Commissioner John Yates were also provided on the basis that no authority had been given for the entry,” Bridger told CNS.
“I find it very difficult to see how Mr Kernohan is going to pursue his intention to hold people to account now that he has reached a settlement with the very people he was accusing,” Bridger added, as he raised concerns that any investigation into who lied to him that led to the costly probe was now even further from being revealed.
The Tempura investigator has filed a complaint with the FCO as he now believes that not only could the authorities in Cayman have deceived him, but the UK Metropolitan police force as well. That complaint was passed by the FCO to the current police commissioner, David Baines, and Bridger said that Baines “continues to assess my allegation of crime but has still not yet made a decision as to whether the matter warrants investigation.”
With continuing legal action against him, Bridger said he was still restricted in saying much more about the investigation.
It is now almost seven years since Bridger arrived in Cayman to conduct a covert operation posing as a real estate agent. The investigation remains a mystery to the wider public while the public purse continues to pick up the growing tab for the bungled enquiry, which is now believed to be in the region of $20 million.
Tempura boss banned from using secret records
(CNS): The London police officer in charge of the ill-fated internal police probe into potential corruption in the RCIPS between 2007 and 2009 has been told by a Grand Court judge that he should not have secret documents in his possession and that he cannot use them in his defence of a law suit by a former commissioner of police. Martin Bridger, the senior investigating officer of the controversial and costly Operation Tempura, has hundreds of records relating to the probe, which, among many other issues, resulted in the sacking of Stuart Kernohan, the RCIPS CoP at the time. Bridger is facing a law suit filed by Kernohan, who says he was unlawfully dismissed, and the Tempura SIO was hoping to use the documents to show he was not culpable.
However, in the latest instalment in the ongoing saga relating to the bungled investigation, which has plagued the RCIPS, other local authorities, as well as Scotland Yard and the FCO for the last six years, Justice Richard Williams has ruled that Bridger cannot use any of the material he has because it is not his to use. The judge also questioned whether he should even have the documents in his possession, although some were released to him by the Attorney General’s Chambers in order to help with his defence against Kernohan.
The ruling, which has been partially redacted (but posted below), follows an injunction sought by Attorney General Samuel Bulgin to keep more elements of the story from public view. The AG claims that all of the documents in question are protected by legal privilege, which is held by his chambers and not Bridger. Therefore, that privilege was not Bridger’s to waive.
Bridger’s lawyer had argued that the government should not be allowed to hide behind the potential embarrassment authorities would suffer by the exposure of the documents. This, he argued, would stifle Bridger’s ability to properly and fairly defend himself against the claims of misfeasance brought by Kernohan. He also argued that there is a wider public interest and these documents should no longer be cloaked in secrecy.
Bridger has already indicated that some of these documents demonstrate that both the Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, former governor Stuart Jack and the overseas territory security advisor, Larry Covington, were all aware that Kernohan, as the head of the local police service, was planning a covert entry into the offices of a local newspaper, using the services of two of the reporters who worked there to look for evidence of corruption.
Bridger claims that this alleged unlawful entry was the basis on which the discredited Operation Tempura emerged after he had quickly discovered that allegations that Deputy Commissioner Anthony Ennis was disclosing police secrets to the late Desmond Seales, the proprietor of Cayman Net News, were unfounded.
Bridger maintians that if he had known that Kernohan’s plan to use the reporters to snoop around Seales' office had been approved by his superiors, the operation, which has cost more than $10 million, would never have happened.
However, the judge ruled that all of the documents that Bridger wants to use, which had been the subject of the injunction, cannot be disclosed, agreeing with the AG that the privilege to disclose the documents was not Bridger’s to waive.
Questions were also raised in the judgment about why Bridger had taken documents with him when he left the post as head of the investigation and that documents given to him by the AG’s chambers to help him in the Kernohan defence could not be shown to Kernohan or his lawyers.
The ruling will prevent Bridger from legally exposing the evidence that he maintains shows he conducted himself properly throughout the enquiry.
The people of Cayman, who paid for the investigation, will also still be kept in the dark about what appears to be a catalogue of bungles by everyone involved in the Tempura fiasco.
Taylor defends decisions over Operation Tempura
(CNS): The seemingly never-ending saga of the bugled internal police probe, Operation Tempura, is likely to continue dragging on for some time, but the departing governor of the Cayman Islands has defending his part in the costly escapade. Speaking at a final press briefing with the local media on Thursday, Duncan Taylor said he had not “drawn breath” in relation to anything to do with the corruption investigation into the RCIPS without seeking legal advice. He said that his office had continued to fight the release of a report regarding a complaint by Martin Bridger, the senior investigating officer, because he believed it contained defamatory material which could not be published.
Taylor defended his decision to seek a judicial review of the information commissioner’s order to release the details of a complaint in connection with the investigation, because of what are believed to be allegations about senior officials here, most of which are now in the public domain. He said that if the judge finds otherwise, then it will be made public
When he arrived in the Cayman Islands he had said that Operation Tempura was over, he said. “Well it was, but consequential disputes continue,” he added, pointing to the ongoing court cases, including his own with the information commissioner and Bridger’s dispute over documents. The governor also noted the continuing allegations being made about the conduct of some officials, which he said had to be taken seriously and looked at carefully within the law.
“I hope that these outstanding issues will be resolved in the not too distance future,” Taylor added.
Related articles on CNS:
Operation Tempura
I was an investigation officer involved in the Tempura fiasco, having been a Central London Police officer for 30 years. I also lived and worked for two years in Kosovo as part of the UN International Peacekeeping Police Force, so consequently have some experience of policing and legal processes, albeit at the coal-face end. However, in a career of 40 years of policing, this is the only occasion I have ever publicly vented my frustrations through a national newspaper.
Regarding the recent CNS article, No decisions re Tempura, about the knowledge that former governor Stuart Jack, the FCO’s overseas territories security advisor, Larry Covington, and Attorney General Bulgin are alleged to have had on the entry to Cayman Net News, I make the following observations.
In the case of the Cayman investigation, for me, it involved the retrieval and examination of records of thousands of emails, texts and phone calls and also the examination of numerous hard drives. This historical work is massively time consuming but nonetheless has on many occasions proved fruitful in securing convictions. To find out now that all of this work may have been pointless is just staggering and such a waste of resources and public funds. This new information would also mean that I was also involved in the unnecessary arrest of a high court judge, a former politician and the suspension of senior police officers, which could have all been avoided. Isn’t there enough serious crime to be investigated without being sent on a fool’s errand?
Your recent article refers to a complicated issue. With respect, it is not. Let’s have the truth and keep it simple. Why all the court battles in an effort to suppress information coming out? Why hide the truth? The issue has only been made complicated for the general public because of the lack of information. Why is the governor using the lawyers to make decisions on what should and should not be investigated? Where could that particular dangerous road lead to?
No decisions re Tempura
(CNS): Despite the Scotland Yard recommendation that the bungled investigation into alleged RCIPS corruption should itself be investigated, along with the role of very senior local officials, Cayman Islands Governor Duncan Taylor has still not made a decision about how to deal with the on-going fall out of Operation Tempura. As numerous legal battles relating to the discredited enquiry continue in the courts, Taylor said he is still waiting on advice regarding the potential probe into the probe. It is not clear who has the legal authority to trigger a new enquiry, which the UK cops have recommended be undertaken by a neutral service unconnected with the original operation.
From the governor’s battle with the information commissioner to keep the investigation into a complaint about the enquiry under wraps, to the attorney general’s fight to keep the former lead investigating officer of Tempura, Martin Bridger, from using documents in another courtroom battle against him by former police commissioner Stuart Kernohan, the controversial enquiry continues to cost the Cayman taxpayer significant sums.
The latest twist, however, has become increasingly serious as the Metropolitan Police announced recently that they believed an enquiry into the events that triggered the probe was warranted. This was based on evidence given by Bridger, Kernohan and the former RCIPS chief superintendent John Jones. The ex-cops all say that former governor Stuart Jack, the current overseas territories security advisor, Larry Covington, and Cayman’s sitting attorney general, Samuel Bulgin, were all aware of Kernohan’s decision to allow staff at Cayman Net News to make a late night entry into their place of work hunting for evidence.
The decision, according to Kernohan and Jones, to look for evidence that they believed may have pointed to a corrupt relationship between the late owner of the paper, Desmond Seales, and Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Ennis, based on allegations by two reporters at the paper, was made in the full knowledge of Jack, Covington and Bulgin.
Bridger claims that he was never told the crucial and fundamental fact that these three senior officials all knew of Kernohan’s decision and had given their tacit blessing. As a result, he now believes that the almost two year long and costly discredited Operation Tempura, which he triggered, along with the subsequent catalogue of issues would never have happened had he been aware of this.
Bridger recently filed a complaint with Scotland Yard, which had original oversight of the probe, with evidence suggesting he had been misled, which was backed up with statements from both Kernohan and Jones, who have pointed the finger at the three senior officials. Given the Met’s compromised position, however, the UK police force wrote to the current governor, Duncan Taylor, recommending that he begin an investigation using an external police service to find out if the evidence presented to them supports the allegations made by Bridger.
Answering enquiries from CNS last week, the governor’s office said no decision had yet been in this matter, despite the recommendations made by the Scotland Yard boss.
“The Governor is still awaiting receipt of the independent legal advice which he has commissioned in response to the letter from Commander Gibson of the Metropolitan Police,” officials said.
Sources in the UK state that the Metropolitan Police have real concerns as they believe that, if Bridger’s position is accurate, the London-based cops as well as Bridger were also misled. Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey has backed the position of Commander Allan Gibson, with whom Bridger filed his complaint, that an enquiry is needed to establish how Operation Tempura began.
It is not normally the remit of a governor to instigate a criminal investigation. In theory it should be David Baines as the RCISP commissioner that triggers the enquiry, but because of his own conflict he would need to ask an outside force, such as another OT territory's police service, to investigate what happened.
Bridger recently revealed that had Jack, Covington and Bulgin all told him that they were informed about Kernohan’s decision, there would never have been an operation Tempura, Kernohan and Jones would never have been suspended, the associate burglary case of Lyndon Martin would never have happened and the Grand Court Judge Alex Henderson would never have received a $1.275million payout from the public purse as he would never have been arrested, unlawfully or otherwise.
The former senior investigator has always claimed that he acted on advice of Andre Mondesir, legal counsel at the time, who now works at CIMA. The advice, he has said, was based on the position that Kernohan and Jones had instigated the entry into the newspaper without any authority, which both men have categorically denied and recorded the meetings they had where the issue was discussed with the three senior officials.
The issue has now become increasingly complicated as the current efforts of Attorney General Bulgin to prevent Bridger using documents in the wrongful dismissal case brought by Kernohan would need to be used in any enquiry which now points the finger of suspicion at Stuart Jack, Larry Covington and Bulgin himself.
With the ironies and conflicts mounting in this case, if a criminal investigation is launched over allegations that the UK police, the Tempura team and legal counsel were all misled, it would be hard to see how Covington and Bulgin could then continue in their respective offices.
As the twists and turns of Tempura continue almost four years after the investigation was shut down, the bill for the entirely innocent Cayman taxpayer continues to grow and a catalogue of incompetence by just about every official involved in the investigation, from start to finish and now beyond, continues to be revealed.
Jack and Bulgin face enquiry
(CNS): Former Governor Stuart Jack, Attorney General Sam Bulgin and the FCO's Caribbean Policy Adviser Larry Covington could face a criminal inquiry for allegedly lying to Metropolitan Police officers investigating corruption within the RCIPS, a Scotland Yard review has concluded. Jack has been cited by the Met in a letter to the current governor, Duncan Taylor, for possible attempts to pervert the course of justice over a break-in at the Cayman Net News office in 2007 by two of its staff. The senior investigating officer of "Operation Tempura", Martin Bridger, has claimed that Jack did not tell him that he had authorised the search and that if he had, the investigation would have lasted for only a couple of weeks. However, Jack has categorically denied the allegations made by Bridger, implying that he had told him about his part in the break-in.
In a statement to CNS, Jack said, “I categorically deny the allegations made by Martin Bridger. One can only assume that Mr Bridger’s continued attempts to undermine my credibility are designed to further his own interests in relation to the forthcoming civil proceedings in the Cayman Islands.
"Such baseless accusations are deeply upsetting to my family and harmful to my reputation. I look forward to giving evidence as a witness when those civil proceedings come for trial in the Cayman Islands Grand Court. I have no doubt that the Court will find Mr Bridger’s remarks to be wholly unsubstantiated."
Bulgin has also vehemently denied the allegations.
Bridger told CNS that he has documented evidence of his interviews with the former governor, the attorney general and Covington, the FCO official who was based in Miami at the time of the investigation. He said that these have been shown to the Metropolitan Police and on the basis of these interviews, Met officials had decided that an investigation into their conduct was warranted.
Stuart Kernohan, who was the Cayman Islands commissioner of police at the time, and his deputy, John Jones, have both made statements that Jack was fully aware of and had authorized the search of the Net News officers by John Evans and Lyndon Martin, who were both working as reporters at the newspaper at the time.
Much of the controversy over the investigation, which has cost the Cayman Islands millions of dollars, is now over the question of whether Jack knew about the break-in or not, as Bridger's position is that his entire investigation was based from the very start on a false premise. Kernohan, who was suspended when the investigation was made public in March 2008 and eventually sacked from his job, and Jones, who has since retired from the RCIPS, have supported Bridger's call for an investigation into the conduct of the officials.
"If it is shown that they lied to me in the course of the investigation, that is immense," Bridger told CNS. Jack has retired but Bridger said that AG Sam Bulgin and Covington could not viably remain in their posts if such an investigation takes place, in the same way that Kernohan and Jones were suspended from the RCIPS when Operation Tempura was in progress.
“From the outset, and continuing until this day, I have called for a full investigation into the conduct of the Governor and member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Stuart Jack, Samuel Bulgin the Attorney General, the Chief Secretary George McCarthy, and others involved in this fiasco,” Kernohan stated in April.
According to the The Independent on Sunday, which says it has seen the letterfrom the Yard's Commander Allan Gibson to Taylor, copied to Simon Fraser, the head of the Diplomatic Service, the claims against Jack and the other two officials, which Jack strongly denies, amount to possible "misconduct in public office, attempting to pervert the course of justice and possibly wasting police time.” Gibson wrote, “It is my view the allegations are serious and contain sufficient detail to warrant a criminal investigation."
The FCO is continuing its fight to keep details of Tempura secret. The Cayman Information Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert directed the Governor's Office to release a copy of a report relating to a complaint filed by Martin Bridger about the operation to a freedom of information applicant. However, Justice Sir Alan Moses stayed the release on appeal. The British judge approved Governor Taylor’s application for judicial review and the next step is to set a date for the substantive hearing, but in the meantime the report remains secret.
See documents regarding Operation Tempura in the CNS Library
Related articles on CNS:
Former Cayman governor silent on Tempura probe
Ex-London cop speaks out on RCIPS probe secrecy