| Special Prosecutor Moves Forward with Investigation | | Print | |
| Sunday, 22 November 2009 21:27 | |||
 Special Prosecutor Helen Garlick has announced that she and her team have finished reviewing the Commission of Inquiry report and will target a number of its recommendations, plus “new matters” not addressed by the inquiry, but she did not elaborate.
After hearing five weeks of testimony in January and February, Commissioner Sir Robin Auld issued a final report in July recommending criminal investigations of former Premier Michael Misick, his deputy Floyd Hall, former Environment Minister McAllister Hanchell, former Health Minister Lillian Boyce and former Housing Minister Jeffery Hall for a variety of allegations of possible corruption and misfeasance in public office. He also recommended partially suspending the country’s constitution, dissolving the House of Assembly and putting His Excellency Gov. Gordon Wetherell in charge. In August, the governor appointed Garlick to investigate Auld’s allegations of wrongdoing and to carry out prosecutions. Garlick said the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT) has made contacts with U.S. law enforcement and is recruiting an intelligence unit that includes a financial investigator and an analyst. “Financial constraints have held up recruitment and deployment of the full investigation team, but I expect it to be in place in the first quarter of next year,” she said in a Nov. 20 press release. The team has been based in London, traveling frequently to the Turks and Caicos Islands, but will “have a permanent presence here” in the future, she said. She has submitted an investigation plan and a budget to the Strategic Oversight Group (SOG), which the Governor set up to provide independent oversight of the criminal investigation. The group meets regularly and consists of Chief Executive Mark Capes, Deputy Police Commissioner Hubert Hughes, a representative of the Attorney General’s Chambers, the Overseas Territories Law Enforcement Adviser and a senior former British Police Officer. Garlick, former assistant director of the UK's Serious Fraud Office, had already named her Deputy Special Prosecutor Lee Marler, a former head of the Anti Corruption Office at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. She now has appointed Senior Investigating Officer Keith Chamberlain, who has been a senior investigator to the Public Inquiry in Northern Ireland into the death of Rosemary Nelson, a civil rights lawyer who was murdered by a car bomb. He also served as Detective Chief Superintendent and Assistant Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire. He was a Senior Investigator to the Metropolitan Police Cold Cases Review Team, examining unsolved murder cases, before being posted to the BVI between 2003 and 2005 to investigate cases of Government corruption. John Briggs will be Chamberlain’s deputy investigator. He is a former Detective Superintendent and Head of Major Crime at Derbyshire Police Force. “Together they have many years experience of investigating major crime and corruption cases in the UK and several other jurisdictions,” she said. “I continue to encourage members of the public to contact us, if they have information that they wish to give, or if they have any concerns that they want to take up with us,” Garlick said. The Special Investigation and Prosecution team can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or in the UK at 83 Victoria Street, London SW1H OHW, or +44(0) 203 170 7544.
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