Polack Post: Caribbean Telecoms – Incompetent Government Lawyers
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
The poultry is coming home to roost in the Cayman Islands, not only with the recent avian flu infection, but the selection of the least able legal leaders not only to sort through that government’s regulation of the local telecoms but wider afield in the courts. This in a Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands, full of able and acclaimed lawyers.
The first blow came in September this year when the local Grand Court ruled that the new government headed by a new leader had no authority to collect a royalty fee from one of the smaller telecoms.
This has been followed up by another court case against the fledgling government by the telecom giant Digicel claiming repayment of nearly $2 Million taken by the government regulator. The recently released budget did not plan for this, although expected, if the truth be known by a deaf or blind man.
The government legal woes are always followed by pronouncements of appeals, new laws, even the occasional respect of the court decision but no peer review of how we came to this desert outpost.
It was only a few years before this that the premier Cayman law firm thrashed the government lawyers in court over proposed, but failed, anti-money laundering rules by the government regulator.
These recent developments come on the cusp of court awards for costs against the government on a mismanaged search warrant and two failed prosecutions of serious crimes rejected by a jury. There will shortly be a call to remove juries that embarrass prosecutorial and police incompetence just as the preliminary inquiry was removed after multiple prosecution failures. This is not the first nor will it be the last time.
The prosecution answer was to hold an expensive international prosecutor conference.
None of this should come as any surprise to a country that holds the Commonwealth record for prosecutorial excess and likely, legal costs against the prosecution.
The Portfolio of Legal Affairs is like a bad boyfriend and responsibility starts at the top.
See me and come live with me.
Notes
https://caymanmarlroad.com/2025/09/16/court-rules-ofreg-lacked-authority-to-collect-fees-from-c3
https://www.caymancompass.com/2025/12/03/digicel-sues-telecoms-regulator-for-1-6-million
https://www.caymancompass.com/2025/10/16/man-cleared-on-charge-of-gun-possession
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
