Cayman Islands Reacts to FIFA Scandal by Threatening Media

Yes, indeed, Nomad! There's a huge hoo-hah here, as you'd expect. Not only was a local man - a born-and-bred bloodline Caymanian, at that - one of the seven officials arrested and now languishing in a Swiss jail, but one of our half-dozen commercial banks is strongly suspected of processing some of the FIFA bribes money. Also, the head of our Monetary Authority is married to one of the attendees at the fiasco in Switzerland.

I've just posted on my website asking what FIFA's auditors were doing while all the shenanigans were going on, so I won't repeat any of it on this thread. The reports are shocking enough to have already spun off a sequel.

The Editor of our daily newspaper (he an expat of long standing) took the opportunity to lambast Cayman for tolerating a culture of corruption. Our Premier (another bloodline Caymanian, and leader of the generally acknowledged anti-expat political party) went hysterical. Rejecting the accusation, which he claimed was an insult to ALL Caymanians, he labelled the paper's Editorial "treasonous", and persuaded the local legislators to resolve to pull all government advertising from the paper forever more.

The radio talk-programs ran hot, with so much hostility that the Editor and his wife feared for their personal safety and fled to Florida in a chartered plane. Where they remain to this day.

Watch this space for updates!

Nomad: Would you kindly do me a favour and change the title of this thread to include the FIFA acronym? Thanks.

Hi, Gordon. Do you know how I can edit the thread's title? I don't see an obvious way to do it.

Hello NomadLawyer,

If you would like to change your thread's title i would suggest that you contact us with the new title ( to which you wish to change it to.)

Cheers,
Gavind

For those wanting to keep up... http://www.compassdatadesk.com/

The Editor of the paper returned to the Island just last Friday, and was photographed driving around in a convertible with the hood down, accompanied by a security guard. He's probably wise to have the guard; there's a lot of hostility towards him from among the native-Caymanian community. Our Premier is reported as saying he will not revoke the ban on government advertising until the Editor apologises for his editorial of 3rd June. Unfortunately, that's a true indicator of how childish our political class is.

The latest news is that our government has at last made peace with our daily newspaper, and will be giving some government advertising to the paper again. Such a childish tantrum, all these months!

For those interested in the financial affairs of FIFA, here are some of my personal opinions!
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2015/ … itors.html

Here's the Front Page article from today's local paper. Interesting.
http://www.caymancompass.com/2016/02/07 … ere-graft/

I have been invited to be a member of a new and independent committee charge with looking into the money that FIFA paid to the Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA). That should be interesting, too, if I'm allowed to take up the post - and if the committee isn't set up to fail!

The latest news is that we've been told that FIFA didn't pay any money to CIFA, but chose the Cayman contractors after a tender-process and paid them directly from Switzerland. CIFA was then gifted the facilities - a football pitch and an office building that together cost $2 1/2 million. Hmmm. Lots of groundwork to be covered by our little committee, if we decide to press on. We got off to a bad start with the CIFA Executive Committee when they required us to sign a boilerplate confidentiality agreement. We have refused, so we'll see if our supposed independence survives the stand-off!

Keep up the good work, Gordon. If civil society doesn't push back against this sort of thing, then soon we're all living in a cesspool of corruption, duplicity and poverty.

Incidentally, I'm working in Zurich now and walk by the FIFA Museum (and a nearby hotel that it owns) frequently. Don't think it's open yet but somehow I doubt there'll be an exhibit on its corruption scandals

Always good to hear from you, Nomad. Yes, I think you're right about the chances of the corruption scandal being featured in the museum in Zurich!