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A reliable local source in Grand Cayman, who has a contact inside the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), has asserted that he has been advised that a senior official in the Government has given a direct order to the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, telling it not to charge any of the locally-based financial professionals, popularly known as the Cayman Gang of Four, with their $450m theft of securities and bank accounts of Canadian pensioners, in 2014 and 2015.
The source has learned that none of the foreign nationals are to be charged with the massive fraud, for purely political reasons. There has been serious scrutiny, by agencies of the United Kingdom, of the increasing amount of financial crime, and Cayman officials rightly fear possible intervention, at a number of levels. The local impact, of the UK action in the Turks & Caicos Islands, on Cayman, and other British Overseas Territories, should not be underestimated; Caymanians fear intervention, of some type, and are concerned that a prominent criminal case, involving Gang members Ryan Bateman, Derek Buntain, and Sharon Lamb, who are two Canadians, and a national from the Isle of Man, could further expose the Cayman Islands to UK action.
It is no accident that three of the most senior positions in the RCIPS have recently been given to law enforcement professionals from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, when promotion from within the ranks would have been more in line with the principles of community policing, where local officers, who come from, and therefore better understand the community they are working in, generally ascend to senior positions, through merit.
Rumors, emanating from other quarters, indicate that RCIPS management was bluntly told to conduct a thorough and extensive investigation, but not to proceed to indictment, which places political agendas before the protection of the public. One observer claims that the RCIPS will not charge any foreign national with financial crime, again to maintain a low profile for UK observers, and not to give them any excuse to interfere in what Caymanians view as purely internal affairs. Sharon Lamb was allegedly told to leave Grand Cayman, so that questions about her arrest would not be asked; Ryan Bateman was long gone, he having failed to return to face criminal charges. Derek Buntain is in hiding, somewhere in Canada, so there are no Gang members still residing in Grand Cayman.
Let us hope that you find all this as offensive as I do.
