Criminals Abound in Nassau
Tomorrow, you may read in the Punch, of an ex-CIBC banker who is being charged with aiding and abetting a fraudulent transaction -- in this case, a cheque for $150,000. The story is that he processed the cheque without waiting for the funds to clear, and the cheque was a fraudulent American Dollar cheque.
We have been looking at the strange happenings at First Caribbean (formally the CIBC or Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) for some time now, but this case takes the cake. In brief, the story is that a man named Williams brought a cheque to the bank for a property transaction in 2002. It was an American dollar cheque with a face value of $150,000. In spite of the fact that the cheque was brought in by Williams, it was deposited to the account of Cecil Smith.
Cecil Smith is an ethically challenged air conditioning contractor in Nassau who made his money by having an open-ended service contract at the airport that he milked for big bucks. He was also the guy who paid for a campaign party for Tommy Turnquest that got Tommy into trouble. The way that it worked, was that Turnquest granted Smith the contract against the advice of the Ministry of Works, and the quid pro quo was a $31,000 party thrown for Tommy on Paradise Island. All in all, Smith is an unsavoury character.
Cecil Smith was a valued client at the bank because of the large sums of money that he lau... errrr deposited. The bank manager was told to take care of Cecil personally. In those halcyon days of banking, often times the deal was done and the paperwork was completed after the fact.
At the bank's urging, the manager processed the cheque which turned out to be fraudulent. Cecil Smith gets the money and refuses to pay it back. A police investigation ensued and the Financial Crimes unit absolved the banker and Williams of any criminal wrongdoing.
Spring forward six years later. All of a sudden, at the behest of rogue elements in the Attorney General's office and First Caribbean, the case is opened and the ex-Banker and Williams are charged with aiding and abetting this $150,000 fraud. But ... get this ... the guy who actually got the money -- Cecil Smith is not being charged. If you or I deposited a fake cheque, you can be sure that the bank and the police would be on our asses so fast that you couldn't blink.
This raises some important questions? Who and why is pushing this case now, when the police absolved the two individuals? And why is not Cecil Smith being charged with fraud? Could it be that something bigger is going on? When Michael Barnett the attorney general was apprised of the case, he knew nothing about it. Why is First Caribbean conducting a vendetta against these two while protecting Cecil Smith? And who instituted the action in the attorney General's office without the Attorney General knowing? Could it be that someone is trying to hush up something bigger?
Back in the day, CIBC had a prime client -- John Bull. The Hazelwoods, the original white knights ran John Bull and their bank was the CIBC. Their account was looked after by Terry Hilts and Walter Wells. Terry Hilts has been in the Bahamas for 40 years with the CIBC and has donned the mantle of respectability. We invite Mr. Hilts and Mr. Wells to sue us, because we are accusing them of being white collar criminals who aided the Hazelwoods and John Bull in evading millions of dollars of stamp tax payable to the Bahamas government treasury, and we have the documents to prove it.
It worked this way. John Bull had a shell entity in Freeport. Freeport is a free port -- no stamp tax on outgoing bank drafts. John Bull imported millions of dollars of inventory into their Nassau New Providence operations. They didn't even try to launder the goods through tax-free Freeport. When it came time to pay the suppliers, Terry Hilts and Walter Wells of the CIBC would make sure that the draft went into the CIBC pouch to Freeport, where it was paid by the Freeport branch of the CIBC -- attributed to the shell entity in Freeport that John Bull ran. In other words, they pretended that the Freeport John Bull office was the actual recipient of the goods and were just paying their bills. The group criminally evaded millions and millions of dollars in stamp tax.
Guess who found out about this criminal enterprise? It was the good old cabinet rapist, Bradley Roberts. He tried to make hay of this but it was quickly buried by none other than Hubert Ingraham, the Prime Minister. Why would you ask? Well, Hubert wasn't that good with money, and his personal overdraft is now at over $500,000, with who ??? --- the CIBC or First Caribbean as it is now known. Now this overdraft is unsecured. Sharon Brown who runs First Caribbean is shitting bricks, and good old Hubert Ingraham gave her the old quid pro quo. So yes, we are accusing Hubert Alexander Ingraham of perfidy and hiding lawlessness because he owes First Caribbean half a million dollars.
Here is what we do know. The 2002 case of prosecuting everyone but Cecil Smith will blow up in the face of First Caribbean. They will be liable for millions of dollars in damages and they will be willing sued by Brave Davis who is the attorney of record. In between doing Jamaican prostitutes, First Caribbean will be on the hook, and for the loan to Hubigetty as well. Sharon Brown is supposedly on vacation now, but she should be shitting bricks. Terry Hilts should be getting worried because we are forwarding a package of documents to CIBC in Canada, as well as the White Collar Crimes Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
God does play dice with the university. There is an element of supreme irony here. John Bull was named after a character in British satire who penned an article "The Law is a Bottomless Pit". In the Bahamas, this is so true.
Hubert Ingraham should resign. Enough is enough in this damn country full of underhanded niggeritis, lying, porkbarrelling, criminality and injustice. We have become a nation of sub-human animals where truth and goodness take a back seat to the almighty dollar, and the high road is just for suckers. If we had the reins of government, people like Hilts, Wells, Smith, Hubigetty, Roberts and the lot of them would be carrying their own slop buckets in Fox Hell. The day is coming, and the mills of God grind slowly and exceedingly fine. Some day the perpetrators will pay, and that will be the day of real Majority Rule in this country. So mote it be.