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T&C corruption files a costly farce

It seems like ages ago now, but not so long ago, the people of the Turks & Caicos Islands looked to the British with hope. And, unlike his predecessors, former governor Gordon Wetherell justified that hope. He showed the political courage and moral fortitude to trigger the suspension of the TCI Constitution — ending the “political amorality and immaturity and general administrative incompetence” that prevailed under the local rule of Michael Misick, the Premier.

Wetherell appointed the 2009 Commission of Inquiry, which laid bare the “endemic corruption” of Misick and his cronies. This led to their removal from power and set in motion the investigations that ultimately resulted in their arrests. TCIslanders hoped that, with both constitutional authority and moral duty, Wetherell’s successors would hold these crooks to account. Alas, things fell apart.

Simply put, successive governors stood by as the so-called Special Investigation and Prosecution Team trials dragged on for more than a decade, costing TCI taxpayers a mercantile $100 million and counting. Frankly, this legal process has proved as dilatory, incompetent and feckless as the Commission of Inquiry was swift, competent and damning. It is as if we are living the postcolonial follies and venal administrative high jinks that V.S. Naipaul skewered in A Bend in the River.

If anyone had told long-suffering TCIslanders at the outset that:

• The British would take more than a decade — and tens of millions of our money — to prosecute Misick and his cronies

• Most defendants would get off with suspended sentences and court-ordered restitution amounting to only a laughable fraction of what they stole

We would have said: “Don’t bother, man. Spare us the farce — and the bill”.

Frankly, justice has not merely been delayed; it has been “drastically” discounted, both literally and figuratively. Of course, Misick and his cronies did what any shameless defendants would: they weaponised every procedural trick, orchestrating endless delays while expert British judges and prosecutors indulged their charade — probably too busy tallying billable hours to notice the sabotage.

We were bewildered and dismayed in equal measure as we watched all defendants make a mockery of the judicial process. I mean, it was like watching a matador tease a blind bull. Yet that paled in comparison with our bewilderment and dismay when Floyd Hall and Clayton Greene were sentenced in October 2023. The TCI’s own chief justice declared she was handing down “drastically reduced” sentences because of Hall’s poor health and “significant delays in prosecution”. Their mockery — and the willingness of TCI judges to indulge it — seemed completely lost on her.

Meanwhile, chief crook Misick’s trial concluded recently. Yet, insultingly, the judge is delaying his verdict until October — a timeline that would be untenable in any functioning democracy. Even juries in America routinely hear cases that are far more complex and have no difficulty rendering verdicts within days.

Michael Misick, former premier of the Turks & Caicos Islands

No doubt, everyone expects a guilty verdict. More to the point, after the limp slaps on the wrist for Hall and Greene, everyone expects Misick to get a suspended sentence. After all, with due respect to the medical profession, why wouldn’t Misick ape Trump by having his doctor declare that — like Hall — he, too, is in such “poor health” it would be inhumane to make him serve a single day in prison? What’s more, he will probably be required to forfeit only a fraction of the hundreds of millions he bragged about looting while premier.

Then, to top it off, everyone expects his automatic appeal to drag out until at least the winter of 2026. Like I said, a complete farce.

Incidentally, former minister Lillian Boyce stands as the moral centre of this legal farce because she was the only crony with the conscience and integrity to plead guilty, thereby sparing TCIslanders the expense and national embarrassment of a criminal trial.

Boyce’s plea made her a witness for the prosecution whose testimony guaranteed guilty verdicts for any other crony foolish enough to risk trial. Even so, it took five years after the SIPT trials began in December 2015, and 12 years after the Commission of Inquiry’s indictments, for the prosecutors to strike this plea bargain.

That said, it is arguable that the legions of expatriate judges, “special” prosecutors and defence lawyers all had vested interests in dragging out these trials. After all, the judges and prosecutors collected exorbitant salaries, while the defence lawyers pocketed hefty legal fees.

Sure, defence lawyers usually rake in the big bucks in criminal cases. But special prosecutor Andrew Mitchell is giving them a run for their money. Reports are that he is still billing the TCI Government more than £3,000 per day — plus luxury living and travel expenses. No British lawyer ever benefited so handsomely from any criminal case. And this while the local government struggles to deliver basic public services.

This isn’t just a legal boondoggle; it’s a cynical transfer of wealth from one set of opportunists (our crooked politicians) to another (British hired guns). “Attorneys and investigators in the case are becoming extremely wealthy off the backs of the people of the Turks & Caicos Islands.”

But the supreme miscarriage of justice is how the British left long-suffering TCIslanders holding the bag for this costly farce. You would never know it, but the British retained responsibility for good governance through the appointed governor.

The point is that their man in Turks & Caicos presided over many of the corrupt practices at issue during these trials. Indeed, that is why Misick’s infamous defence — that the Governor signed off on everything — was more than self-serving; it was an indictment of the constitutional colonialism the British lording over “Overseas Territories” represents.

Thus, the British compounded their failure to deliver justice in these SIPT trials by forcing TCI taxpayers to bear the costs. And this, despite a formal submission to the British Government making clear that responsibility for funding these prosecutions belongs to the UK, not the TCI.

That submission echoed arguments I made years earlier: the UK’s own failures of oversight, governance and administrative responsibility made these prosecutions necessary in the first place. In effect, we are being robbed twice — first by Misick and his cronies treating our treasury like their slush fund, and then by the British forcing us to foot the bill for prosecutions designed to fail.

This hearkens back to the most insidious form of colonial grift — injustice for us, profits for them. A farce so perverse, even Naipaul would have struggled to satirise it.

• Anthony L. Hall is the founding columnist of The iPINIONS Journal, where he has published sharp, independent commentary on global affairs since 2005. This opinion has appeared already in the Turks & Caicos media space

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Published July 24, 2025 at 8:00 am (Updated July 24, 2025 at 7:18 am)

T&C corruption files a costly farce

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