Canover Watson (centre) being led away from court after being sentenced for fraud.
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Monday February 8, 2016 – A millionaire businessman who conspired with his friend, FIFA corruption accused Jeffrey Webb, will spend the next seven years behind bars after being found guilty of his involvement in a scheme to cheat the Cayman Islands government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Businessman Canover Watson was sentenced to seven years on each of two counts of conspiracy to defraud, and three years each on the counts of conflict of interest, fraud on government and breach of trust. The sentences will run concurrently which means he will be in prison for seven years.
He was found not guilty of a sixth charge, transferring criminal property.
The charges stemmed from a CarePay hospital contract investigation. According to evidence led at the trial, Watson, who was chairman of the Cayman Islands’ Health Services Authority, conspired with Webb, his friend and business party, to skim hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from a CarePay patient swipe card contract between 2010 and 2013.
The prosecution had contended that the loss to government, through the fraud, would have been almost US$5.7 million if Watson’s and Webb’s plans had succeeded.
“The evidence against you was overwhelming,” Justice Michael Mettyear said in handing down sentence last Friday, chastising Watson for using his position of power and trust as HSA chairman to carry out the fraud.
“You are a certified accountant. Yet you behaved shamelessly, falsifying presentations, letters, emails, contracts and signatures . . . You were already a wealthy man when this started. It was sheer greed and contempt for your fellow Caymanians that caused you to act as you did.”
The judge told the convicted fraudster, the recipient of the Young Caymanian Leadership Award in 2007, that he had let down many young people whom he had previously inspired.
While Watson’s lawyer, Queen’s Council Trevor Burke, had pointed to his client’s good deeds and service to the community in the past decade, Mettyear suggested that made his crime even worse, in some ways.
Watson faces more than imprisonment for his crime. Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Patrick Moran said the Crown would be recommending to the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority that he be prevented from registering companies in the Cayman Islands, and that at least some of his assets are forfeited in an effort to recover the US$417,000 he took.
Burke told the court that Watson was ruined, as the conviction would leave him penniless and it would be difficult for him to find a job once he was released from prison.
Watson’s co-conspirator Webb, who allegedly earned about US$1.7 million from the scheme, did not face trial, as he is in the United States awaiting sentencing for racketeering and bribery in the corruption investigation at football’s world governing body. The former FIFA vice-president pleaded guilty to the charges last November after being arrested in Switzerland along with other FIFA executives.