Last night Panorama, the longest running investigative program in the western world, broadcast an episode on BBC ONE updating the public on the results of their ongoing two year investigation into the events that have unfolded in recent years in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The programming is stunning in its ramifications for those of us here in the TCI and for those in the halls of power in London, or for those within the leadership of the Conservative Party of Britain.

The focus of this episode was the ownership of Johnston International.  The controversial construction company that in recent years transferred lots in Leeward to Premier Michael Misick and Finance & Health Minister Floyd Hall.  Built Michael Misick’s mulit-million dollar home on what appeared not be commercial terms.  The firm that was heavily involved in the construction of the Alexandria Resort headed by Washington Misick, brother of Michael Misick, as well the aborted Lucyan Resort owned by Clayton Greene and Floyd Hall, and the environmental holocaust that was the dredging of Leeward-Going-Through and the subsequent dumping of millions of yards of sand onto a protected National Nature Reserve in a grotesque attempt to create a Dubai like artificial island, “Star Island” with the American businessman Rodney Propps.

Johnston was also the company that received the contract for the repair of Leeward Highway after allegedly paying a $1 million dollar bribe to a former government.

Most importantly for TCIslanders struggling TODAY to get control of our financial future, Johnston is the company that built the overpriced and allegedly corrupt $124 million, with only 30 beds in total, hospitals in the TCI in conjunction with Interhealth Canada; the company which is NOW charging the TCI taxpayers 12% interest on that $124 million with a lien on the hospital properties for an amount greater than $200 million.

The Panorama episode appears to provide conclusive proof that Lord Michael Ashcroft in fact controlled Johnston International as well as its parent Oxford Ventures, even after 1999 when he claimed that he sold it in a management led buyout (management he brought in just a few years earlier after purchasing the company).

As well as recounting the testimony of 14 former employees of Johnston who firmly believed that Lord Ashcroft was the beneficial owner of the company, the program read from a stack of faxes that went between Ashcroft and Allan Forrest the CEO of Johnston over a period of SEVEN YEARS.

In one fax Forrest thanks Ashcroft for a raise in pay, in another fax he thanks Ashcroft for a $300,000 bonus, and in yet a third fax he is quoted as saying:  "The perception in Belize is that you are still in full control of Oxford's assets (which you are of course)." Oxford Ventures was the parent, on paper, of Johnston International.

The ramifications from this Panorama program cannot be underestimated.   Prime Minister David Cameron as well as Special Prosecutor Helen Garlick have no excuse not to act now to get to the bottom of these matters and hopefully this expose will help the citizens of the TCI achieve some element of redress for what has been done to them by corrupt ministers and their accomplices.

For Foreign Secretary William Hague, the head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the current administrator of the TCI, it poses an existential question regarding his personal and professional friendship with Lord Ashcroft.

Lord Ashcroft who twice has shut down the TCI Journal for several weeks with legal threats to our hosting companies, once in March 2009 in the UK and again in December 2010 in the USA, has also filed suit against the Independent newspaper in Britain in recent years for covering elements of this very story, as well as what appears to have been a preemptive attempt at slowing down the Panorama team a few months ago. (Please see the reprint of our article of Oct. 15, 2011).

Though no surprise to most local observers, one cannot overestimate the political and legal ramifications in Britain of what Panorama revealed last night.

God Bless the BBC and the Panorama producers of “Secrets of the Tory Billionaire”.

The program can be viewed at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t14n

Respectfully,

TCIJournal@gmail.com ; Editors@TCIJournal.com