From James Doran in New York
| DAVID BALLANTYNE, the British-appointed Attorney-General of the Cayman Islands, has resigned amid lurid tales of wiretaps, MI6 agents and money-laundering worthy of a Graham Greene novel. Mr Ballantyne, who will receive a £230,000 pay-off, sparked outrage in the tax haven in January when a money-laundering trial collapsed because of an obstruction of justice by a so-called “agent of the British Government”. The agent, named in court papers as John Doe, was passed hundreds of pages of evidence related to the money-laundering case by another suspected spy. The second man, Brian Gibbs, was head of the Cayman Islands Financial Reporting Unit and was a key witnesses in the trial. Mr Gibbs was allegedly told by Mr Doe to shred evidence in the money-laundering case brought against managers of a company called Eurobank. Mr Gibbs destroyed reams of papers that, Mr Doe feared, would have revealed top- secret names and addresses of whistleblowers vital to the work of MI6 in Cayman and other offshore tax havens. It was also suggested that Mr Gibbs was ordered to bug telephone lines at the Cayman court and in the office of Anthony Smellie, the Chief Justice of Cayman. Mr Gibbs has denied that allegation. Chief Justice Smellie wrote a 20-page judgment about the Eurobank case, in which he revealed that Mr Gibbs had admitted destroying the papers, an act cited as the basis for dismissing the case. Investigations into shady financial companies, which use offshore tax havens to hide their business dealings, have intensified in recent months as intelligence services from Europe and the United States hunt funds destined for terrorist organisations. There is no suggestion that Eurobank or any of its managers on trial were connected to terrorist organisations. The company and its employees were acquitted of any wrongdoing when the case collapsed. It was alleged in documents obtained by The Times that Mr Ballantyne was aware of Mr Gibbs’s work and knew that the “agents of the UK Government” were working covertly in Cayman. Mr Ballantyne, who has denied wrongdoing in the case, is to leave the island for good on March 15 without the ceremony befitting the departure of a former British dignitary. Instead, he released a brief statement about his departure. “Under other circumstances I would have been prepared to continue,” he wrote. “Recent events, however, and the way in which they have been handled have led to a situation where I have decided, on terms acceptable to me, to leave office.” His resignation came three weeks after the Cayman legislature censured him for his role in the failed prosecution and demanded that he go. Local politicians had refused to work with him since the collapse of the Eurobank case. McKeever Bush, leader of the Cayman Islands Government and Father of the House in its legislature, told The Times: “The secret intelligence service of the UK has interfered with the course of justice on Cayman. “How can the UK Government conduct this kind of cold war, this espionage against Cayman? We are an overseas dependent territory.” Mr Ballantyne is expected to return to a family home in Scotland and is said by close confidants to be devastated. He has told friends and colleagues that, far from obstructing justice, it was he who insisted that the presence of the “agents of the UK Government” be revealed to the court. Mr Gibbs has since disappeared from his luxury Cayman home and has not been seen at his office since the trial collapsed on January 14. |
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-606486,00.html
