Former football manager’s fraud sentence cut by appeal court

An appeal against conviction for a massive football fraud was dismissed with a red card by the Court of Appeal on Wednesday; but former CIFA manager Canover Watson’s eight-year sentence was shortened by 12 months.

The three-judge Court of Appeal panel, chaired by President Sir John Golding, Watson’s convictionThe allegation by an official of the Cayman Islands Football Association of fraud and money laundering of US$1.54 million was true.

Objection Sentence from former CIFA colleague Bruce BlakeThe man, who was cleared of money laundering but convicted of two false accounting charges, was allowed to stand trial but was dismissed by the board.

The written decision stated: “The case against Canover Watson was very strong. He tried to put forward many different grounds of appeal against the conviction; In our judgment, none of these make the convictions unsafe or unsatisfactory.

“We reject the request for permission to appeal the conviction.”

The appeal court added: “Consequently, after standing back and attempting to consider the case against Bruce Blake as a whole… we conclude that the convictions on counts seven and eight are safe.

“However, in his case we allow the appeal but deny the appeal.”

The two men were imprisoned in April last year, and Watson, the architect of the fraud committed in 2013-14, was sentenced to the heaviest penalty. Blake was sentenced to two years in prison.

Watson was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for taking secret kickbacks, two years for money laundering and four-and-a-half years for false accounting.

The secret kickbacks included US$1.54 million in payments that Watson obtained from regional football body CONCACAF by submitting fake invoices for sports equipment said to be from a jersey supplier in Pakistan.

But the cash was sent to a similarly named Panama-based company controlled by Watson, and most of the football jerseys, bags and other equipment invoiced were never delivered.

Chief Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale had ordered the money laundering and false accounting sentences to run concurrently, totaling eight years.

Cayman’s reputation as ‘essential’

The appeal court decision said: “The reputation of the Cayman Islands as a financial center is fundamental to the well-being of all residents of the Cayman Islands.

“Punishing people whose criminal behavior negatively impacts reputations should reflect this.”

But the judges said it was not “very easy to follow how the eight-year prison sentence was intended to be compensated”.

They added that there could be “no justified criticism” of a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence or a two-year prison sentence consecutive to three-and-a-half years.

However, the decision stated, “However, we concluded that the four-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed after the three-and-a-half-year prison sentence was excessive…”

Considering all the charges and the various concurrent and consecutive sentences and “guilty”, the court decided that the result should be “an overall sentence of seven years’ imprisonment”.

“We therefore grant Canover Watson permission to appeal the sentence and allow his appeal, limited to the reduction of his sentence from eight years’ imprisonment to seven years’ imprisonment.”