Insider Talking: December 31, 1998

An interesting column was published in the Turks & Caicos Islands Free Press on November 26 in which Opposition MP Norman Saunders argued that the government must statutorily hold a General Election by February 17, 1999 when it would have ruled for precisely four years; Still in the Turks & Caicos Islands, where the strangest things often happen. New Chief Justice Richard Ground halted the trial of a man charged with two counts of possession of cannabis and possession with intent to supply after two jurors were seen getting into the same taxi as the defendant and the defendant’s main witness following the end of the first day of the trial; Nowhere does a country’s politicians have a more one-sided or forgiving relationship with God than in the Cayman Islands; The Cayman government has spent considerable amounts of tax-payers’ money to take out a court injunction against the local Caymanian Compass newspaper to prevent those same taxpayers from seeing all or part of the monopoly agreement the government has with the much-reviled telecommunications carrier Cable & Wireless; As regular readers of this newsletter should be aware, we recently caught Lines Overseas Management salesman Scott Oliver lying to potential clients about his credentials by claiming he was on the board of advisors of the International Exchange Bank of Bermuda, which does not exist; and Grant Gibbons, who was Bermuda’s Finance Minister until the UBP lost the General Election on November 9, has been appointed a founding director of a newly-formed holding company that intends to raise $1 billion for a life and annuity reinsurer.