NASSAU, Bahamas — The Progressive Liberal Party rejects the assertion by the Attorney General in the Senate that “there was no witch hunt involved in prosecutions by his office of PLP politicians,” PLP Chairman Fred Mitchell declared in a press statement released on Sunday, June 27, 2021.
“It is our view that the cases were entirely politically motivated and not evidenced based,” Senator Mitchell asserted. “Indeed, we do not need the word of the Attorney General to rely upon for the truth of the events. We need only go to the record of both cases where in the Frank Smith case, two Ministers of the Government were judicially condemned for their conduct in the matter, which included giving a lucrative contract to the star witness just before she appeared in court.”
Senator Mitchell added; “In the Shane Gibson case, the record again shows that the telephone logs presented by the Crown in the case had been edited and the investigator admitted that she was involved in synchronizing the evidence.
On those facts alone, a proper Attorney General should not have brought the cases.
“However, we know of the public political pressure upon him because of his earlier statement that there was no evidence of corruption before him, that statement given against the backdrop of the campaign promise of the Prime Minister to prosecute PLP politicians in the general election. The Attorney General cannot sustain his story.”
Continuing, Senator Mitchell said: “On Carl Bethel’s claim that PLP’s have prosecuted FNM’S in the past, we find no evidence to support this bogus claim. Former Senator John Bostwick was intercepted by security personnel at the Grand Bahama International Airport on suspicion of carrying live ammunition and an FNM Board Member of the power company was identified by the United States Department of Justice as being involved in a global bribery scheme involving a French energy giant, Alstom. The PLP therefore dismisses the AG’s Senate explanation as disingenuous, characterizing the same as defending the indefensible.”
Senator Mitchell concluded with this acerbic declaration: “Shame on Carl Bethel.”
