(CNS): The Cayman status of disgraced former football executive Canover Watson has been revoked as a result of two fraud convictions. The funds expert, who was once a politically connected community leader, was convicted in 2016 for fraud regarding the HSA payment system and again for an invoicing scam involving CIFA and CONCACAF, for which he is still serving a seven-year sentence.
According to court documents, Watson who also holds a British passport, had applied for a judicial review over the loss of his status, but that has been denied.
Watson was born in Jamaica and brought to the Cayman Islands as a very young child. He grew up and went to school on Grand Cayman, pursued a successful career, became a well-known community leader, served on many government boards, and was a long-time executive at the Cayman Islands Football Association before he was convicted in the CarePay hospital scandal.
After his release from prison for that offence, he was tried and convicted of various fraud offences involving CIFA and CONCACAF in connection with the acquisition of football equipment.
The denial of Watson’s application for judicial review was largely based on technicalities. In the first instance, rather than making a formal appeal, he asked the Immigration Appeals Tribunal to reconsider the Caymanian Status Board’s 2019 decision to revoke his status. Under the law, the board can revoke the status of a foreign national who has committed a crime resulting in a custodial sentence of more than a year.
After the tribunal made it clear they did not have the power to overturn the decision, many months passed before he turned to the courts and made the application for a judicial review.
In court documents, Watson states that as a lay person, “without funding and with limited access while incarcerated”, he was working on his appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), the highest court of appeal for the United Kingdom’s overseas territories, and was not able to deal with the problem of his status until after his criminal appeal was filed.
“My efforts during that period were necessarily focused on preparing and pursuing the Privy Council application, which was time-critical,” he wrote.
Nevertheless, Justice Marlene Carter refused Watson’s application last month because she found that too much time had passed and his arguments were insufficient to explain the delay of more than eight months after the tribunal had made it clear it could not overturn the board’s decision.
The judge said Watson had failed to use the statutory provisions to properly challenge that decision before pursuing redress through the courts in the form of a judicial review.
“The facts of this case do not support there being any special circumstances to warrant a departure from this principle,” Justice Carter wrote in her ruling. “The reasons advanced by the Applicant for not pursuing the statutory appeal are not persuasive. In the absence of such circumstances, leave for judicial review should not be granted.”
Watson is likely to be released next year, and unless he succeeds in quashing his latest conviction through the JCPC, he now has no more avenues to follow to avoid his deportation.
See the ruling on the judicial website, #G2026-0036.
