Cay: C'mon, guys, they were just commissions

The Leader of Government Business, the Hon McKeeva Bush, said on Radio Cayman on Monday that payments received by him from The Ritz-Carlton project, as recently reported in the KYC News newsletter Offshore Alert, were commissions for his real estate company.

The 29 February 2004 issue of Offshore Alert claimed that according to recent court filings, Mr Bush had received over $345,000 in payments from the Ritz between 9 June, 1999 and 17 July, 2000.

A copy of the Ritz's 73-page handwritten accounts journal that covers the period when the payments were allegedly received was filed as an exhibit in litigation proceedings between the Ritz developer Michael Ryan, the Ryan Group and Richard Friend, who says he was the project development company's Senior Vice President from 1998 to 2000.

All together, Mr Bush, whose statement on Monday indicated acknowledgement that he had in fact received at least some of the alleged payments, supposedly received eleven payments ranging from $5,000 to $192,000.
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Speaking specifically about the reason for payments from the Ritz, Mr Bush said: "Any inference that payments to those companies were related to anything other than real estate sales is false and is only a tactic in this election year to smear me as Leader of Government? Anyone who has any documentation that I was paid for anything other than commission and expenses relating to Cambridge Realty and Windsor Development, I beg them to bring them forward and make it public."

Somebody ought to take him at his word and start digging. I want to see an itemization of those real estate sales accompanied by all legal documentation and time-sheets.