Retired Judge says Inniss got the ‘light end of the stick’

A retired High Court Judge in Barbados is describing the 24-month sentence of former Cabinet Minister Donville Inniss on fraud and money laundering charges as a light escape.

Justice Christopher Blackman, who is also a retired Appeals Court Judge, was this evening responding to the verdict which was handed down to Inniss by Judge Kiyo Matsumoto today in the Eastern District Court of New York.

“In all the circumstances, the sentence was not excessive. Anything more than that might have been heavy-handed. He has come off at the light end of the stick,” Justice Blackman told Barbados TODAY.

And Attorney General Dale Marshall was more circumspect in his comments stating that the outcome was the business of the US justice system and it was not for Barbados to debate whether the sentence was light or not.

However, Marshall went on to suggest that the verdict should now bring closure to this “sad” episode.

“I can only say that it now brings to an end, this sad episode in Barbadian history and that there are important lessons to be learned by persons both in and out of public life,” the Attorney General declared.

Inniss, a former Minister of Industry in the defeated Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Government, will start his prison term after surrendering himself to authorities on July 30. He is currently on bail.

He was also sentenced to a two-year supervised release, ordered to declare his assets to US authorities and issued with an order of forfeiture for approximately $36 000 –  the same sum of money he received in bribes from high-level executives of the Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL).

In exchange for the bribes, the court seemed to agree that Inniss leveraged his position as the Minister of Industry to enable ICBL to secure two insurance contracts from the Barbados Government to insure over $100 million worth of Government property.

To conceal the bribes, Inniss arranged to receive the money through a U.S. bank account in the name of a dental company of a friend, which had an address in Elmont, New York.

The judge also ordered the former Cabinet Minister to leave the US after his four-year term of punishment.

Inniss, 55, a U.S. permanent resident who resided in Tampa, Florida, and Barbados, was convicted by a federal jury of two counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering on January 16, 2020.

“Donville Inniss engaged in a bribery and money laundering scheme to line his own pockets at the expense of the people of Barbados,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicholas L. McQuaid of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)