An experiment on racism in TCI and the DPP’s office

Dear Editor,

Re: An experiment on racism in TCI and the DPP’s office

Let’s see what you conclude after reading the following two paragraphs, published recently on Bloomberg’s Business Week: 

“A Caribbean-based lawyer charged in a sting operation pleaded guilty to helping launder what he was told were proceeds of a bank fraud designed to hide $2 million from U.S. tax officials, according to the Justice Department. Patrick Poulin, 41, appeared today in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder monetary instruments.”

“Agents met with one of Poulin’s partners in Turks and Caicos, with Poulin on the phone, according to the indictment. The lawyers set up an offshore foundation called Zero Exposure Inc. Agents later wired $200,000.00 to Poulin’s firm, and he wired it to a Cayman account,according to the indictment.” 

The local police and DPP’s office were likely aware in February of Poulin charge, and now almost five months later, they must be aware of his guilty plea. Does the U.S. Justice department now need to do their job for them? Are they specialists in pretending there is no big white elephant in the room? Was’nt Poulin’s white TCI resident partner in the room with the U.S. officers when they were discussing their schemes? 

While the criminal justice system in the United States leaves much to be desired, that operation, compared with the slovenly, slow,expensive, and racist approach to policing and prosecutions of professional Belongers by the SIPT and the DPP’s office is a contrast in efficiency. After five years and tens of millions of dollars in public funding, living it up at five star beach front resorts, it is unimaginable that the SIPT could have undertaken such a swift, clean, and inexpensive operation. It is also unlikely, in the absence of a prolonged moral spanking from the local press, that the TCI’s criminal justice system would indict a white professional. 

Many expatriates become defensive when you point out the obvious racism, but my theory is that much of the lethargy in prosecuting white expatriate professionals is to maintain the myth that it is Belonger politicians and professionals in the TCI who are mired in corruption, and to the limited extent that white professionals have to be dragged in, the explanation is that they were otherwise impeccable persons that were either coerced into offering bribes to Belongers in a “pay to play” environment, or that they knew nothing of the corruption they facilitated. The former explanation is Padgett’s song and dance routine, choreographed by the SIPT and accepted hook line and sinker by Judge Harrison, setting Padgett scot-free. The latter is the benefit of doubt that is generally given to white professionals. 

At first glance there is a problem with this theory, which is the two white attorneys the SIPT recently strung up in a vulgar public

display. If you look closer at that, however, you will see that the complaint against those individuals went back to a matter almost a decade old, and that before charges were brought there were prolonged complaints from the press about the failure of the local criminal justice system to act. It was only after those complaints developed traction that the SIPT, not the DPP’s office, stepped outside its mandate to prosecute the individuals, in an effort to rehabilitate a growing image of its prosecution as racist. Those arrests also echo an incident a few years ago where a white drunken police officer killed a young Haitian girl who was walking on the side of the road, and where he too was only charged after prolonged complaints from the local press. On examination the exception with the two white attorneys, in fact, is no exception at all. 

As for this experiment, after reading the abstracts from the Business Week article how many readers feel that the TCI’s authorities are ostridges with their heads in a hole, still pretending and automatically giving white professionals the benefit of doubt, a privilege that is not equally extended to black professionals? The DPP’s office seems comfortable assuming, even in a sting, that U.S. police posing as ‘clients’ do not tell their white partners what they are up to, and that even when it is proven that they did, it is only limited to those professionals who confess, not their partners who are in the same room. What do you think would be their conclusions if there were two black professionals participating in the conference? 

My guess is that the real reason for the heads in the hole is because it would undermine and expose as a farce the argument that in order to have clean and transparent Government we need expatriate, preferably white faces, at the head of most of TCI’s institutions. Sticking together and playing deaf dumb and blind to each other’s abuses. That is how a handful of white plantation owners controlled more than ten times as many slaves. Whatever the reason it certainly helps the foot dragging that two of the heads in the hole are white Commissioner of Police (and Canadian) Colin Farqhuar and white DPP (and Canadian) JoAnn Meloche. 

Whatever spin you wish to put on it, there is an obvious cultural bias, and an assumption that black Belongers are generally criminals, and that they generally confide in each other about their criminal misdeeds, even when the suggestion is farcical and strains credibility. The SIPT and local DPP has made those assumptions when there is absolutely no basis for believing them, and in other cases they have strung up professional Belongers on charges for the flimsiest of transactions. 

Excuse my bluntness, but clearly the opposite presumption extends to the white folks?

Jonathan Forbes

Long Bay, Providenciales

by RTC Director