April 29- The Caribbean is one seriously beautiful region in this world.Plush rain forests, beautiful beaches, sunshine all year round – and dirty little tax secrets amid the pebbled and/or sandy beaches.Much of the Caribbean was her Majesty’s property for hundreds of years.
The structures that were left behind in the sixties, when nearly all Crown Colonies were thrust into “independence”, are decidedly British, too.
Bureaucracy and nepotism, favouritism and the concept how to make lots of money without really having to work for it (a very British concept, too), kept many of the island states alive ever since.
You could form a bank quite easily, say, in Antigua during the 70s and 80s, with hardly any money down. It became more difficult in the 90s and virtually impracticable after the turn of the century. But what has remained are tax havens throughout the Caribbean isles. That, too, a very British creation (except for Delaware, USA, where some of the dirtiest monies of the world are still being successful laundered).
Places like the Cayman Islands (still owned by the Crown), Turks & Caicos (still not independent), the British Virgin Islands, BVI, (still an appendix of Great Britain) and a handful of others such as Montserrat, Anguilla, etc. have retained not only the British structures of government (run by a “First Minister” who fulfills the role of a Prime Minister except that he is not much more than an administrator by the Grace of the Crown) but also a level of hypocrisy that so qualified the colonial times.
Enter Antigua & Barbuda. At one stage, this small twin-island nation turned into the centre of global disrepute, when a tall Texan by the name of Stanford, was firmly “in charge” of Antigua (by the sheer depth of his pockets). Unlike most Caribbean islands, Antigua and Barbuda gained independence only in 1981 when many of its neighbours had already “enjoyed” independence for nearly two decades.
The “Land of 365 beaches” and roughly 100,000 inhabitants, frequently boxed above its weight, ever since the Right Honourable Vere Cornwall Bird Sr had become its first Prime Minister. Its attempts to get some of the offshore cake (AND eat it too), were quite successful initially, but the island’s demise arrived with an odd character called Allen Stanford who was somewhat of a precursor of other US fraudsters such as Bernie Madoff. Stanford took well charge of the little island, laundered money as if it was going out of fashion and his Stanford International Bank that dominated the small island’s financial sector was the outward sign of a minuscule economy gone bonkers.
With Stanford’s collapse and the ensuing US trial and imprisonment, Antigua took a massive blow to its reputation from which it has still not fully recovered to this day (nor recovered a penny, either, for the thousands of depositors who continue to wait on whether they will ever get 0.1% of their money back). Hugely dependent on its tourism product, followed by its investment banking and similar industries, the island nation is suffering in many more ways than one.
Enter Gordon Derrick.
Appointed to the Board of the Antigua Commercial Bank in 2004, and serving as its Vice Chairman, Gordon Derrick is of course no Allen Stanford. What he is, is a smooth, shrewd and experienced political operator.
For a tiny little country, which receives FIFA contributions to the tune of USD 250,000 per annum (like all associations do), he also managed to receive hundreds of thousands of FIFA Dollars in terms of Financial Support for technical facilities.
But alas: they don’t exist, those technical facilities. The million Dollar refurbishment – or rather “creation” – of the main football training and playing grounds, duly delivered by FIFA over time, show no results. All this is of course not Derrick’s doing (alone). Other writers, such as Lasana Liburd from near-by Trinidad and Tobago, wrote about the odd goings-on years ago.
Except that nothing ever seems to change in Antigua, no matter what: one of the tentative presidential contenders for the FIFA Presidency next year, Jerôme Champagne, undertook efforts in the past as FIFA’s “chargé d’affaires”– at the time of since well-heeled ex-FIFA GenSec Linsi – to come to grips with what seemed to be some serious Augean Football Stables on the tiny island. Much ado about nothing, really, was the end result: nothing changed, except for (some) of the people who run the ABFA. A decade after the first troubles, there is still no proper football ground, there still are no proper technical facilities and there still is no infrastructure that would deserve the title (the floodlights too, have disappeared, and apparently the generators).
Mr Derrick, who appears to be having some issues with grandeur, now wants to take his reign as CFU president one notch higher, and apparently believes that the world is not watching. Not the world of FIFA nor the world of Caribbean football: the 43-year-old Derrick was reprimanded and fined, after all, in November 2011 by FIFA following their investigation into “ethics violations”.
His nigh-ridiculous exaltations that appear to misguide him to become a candidate for the CONCACAF presidency are just that: ridiculous.
While the ABFA may have forgotten, just as the CFU, that bribes were paid a few years ago at the Hyatt Hotel in Port of Spain, FIFA have not, neither have the FIFA investigators nor its Ethics Committee. Mr Derrick was sanctioned by FIFA at the time for having accepted US Dollars 40,000. Some of the recipients, claiming good faith – a few of those credibly – sent some of that money to the football development in their individual countries. We would like to know what Mr Derrick spent his 40,000 Dollars on. That is a question which remains unanswered, we believe.
We would also like to understand how the ABFA, under the guidance of its General Secretary, Mr Gordon Derrick, managed to do exactly nothing: FIFA’s millions over the years have created nothing. The FIFA mountain of money has given birth to a mouse. So, where did the money go, Mr CONCACAF Presidential Aspirant?
Caribbean football will continue to be at the bottom of the heap unless people start running the National Associations who care about the societal value of football, how it can uplift youngsters – boys and girls – from dismal existence to a meaningful young life filled with hope through football achievement.
Whether people who mortgage land that is a) not theirs, and that is b) in breach of FIFA regulations and c) who have nothing to show for the mortgage money thus received – literally nothing at all in terms of what FIFA had earmarked the Financial Aid money for, many, many moons ago – whether those type of people should hold office at all, is a question that can only deliver “no” for an answer.
Whether those same type of people, who were sanctioned in the past for having accepted dubious money and spent it on God knows what, should stand to preside over a FIFA Confederation, is frankly ridiculous.
No doubt, some people who slipped into the FIFA ExCo – by a solitary vote – and now have an obligation to warrant ethical conduct and morality, those people are probably well advised to reconsider their ties with those whose actions may shed an odd light on their own relationship with them.
A lot seems to be amiss in Antigua, and what we report here (and we are by no means the first to do so) is but the tip of an unpleasant iceberg. Many more questions can be asked. Such as: who financed the escapades of the Barracuda team – “the brainchild of Gordon Derrick” as Caribarena.com has called it – in the US pro competition? (On 23 September 2010, United Soccer Leagues formally announced that Antigua Barracuda FC would join the newly formed USL Pro in 2011 as one of the founding members of the league’s International Division. The 2013 season saw the club lose each of their 26 games, tying the North American professional sports record for futility. The club withdrew from the USL Pro on January 6, 2014, due in part to the lack of a home venue and the accompanying financial reasons). Whose hundreds of thousands of Dollars were spent on the ludicrous exercise? How did Mr Derrick’s team – or rather: Mr Derrick of all people – receive a franchise from the USF (Antigua is hardly the Caribbean’s leading football nation, or is it?)
Who paid for the women’s coach from the USA that came to spend some time in Antigua, apparently attempting to improve women’s football for the 100,000 souls of the twin-island nation? Who paid for the Philadelphia men’s coach who spent lots of time in Antigua? There are many more questions than answers and for Mr Garcia looking the other way when such questions need answers leaves new questions and topics to open as well.
It may fit into the geopolitical picture of the world for some, to investigate Russia, or Qatar, or whoever else. But it seems odd that they do not see the brick wall in front of them but prefer to keep showering pebbles into other people’s gardens.