Bahamas. Shenanigans. Fatigue

Like an Onion, Corruption Is a Many Layered Thing

Peter Swanson Jun 28

Phew!

Four days: Three stories and one opinion piece about shennanigans in the Bahamas. Normally, I release stories on more of an every-other-day schedule.

Anyway, if you are among those who have now joined us because of the coverage of Bahamas cruising-fee hikes and moorings boondogle, welcome.

For those of you who are less interested in that topic, worry not. Loose Cannon will soon return to its normal nautical mix and to its normal pace.

And you are hereby spared a fifth story on the topic.

The story would have been about resurgent corruption in the Bahamas government, as it begins to assume the trappings of a narco-state, complete with a rise in gang violence and homicides. I have decided against a long-form treatment because the subject is not boat-specific enough. Someone should write it, though.

Cliff Notes Version

In writing their November indictment of 11 Bahamians, including high-ranking policemen, U.S. prosecutors set the stage for the arrests, describing the growth of Bahamas government corruption since the end of the Covid epidemic. Besides the actual defendants, the indictment repeatedly references “other corrupt officials” in “key government institutions.”

One defendant gave feds the name of “a high-ranking Bahamian politician” who had offered to commit the country’s entire law enforcement apparatus to moving cocaine in exchange for a $2 million payoff. If true, that sum must now be considered the going rate to purchase, or at least rent a leader of the Bahamian people.

Thankfully for the cruising crowd, most of the criminal violence isn’t happening in the Abacos, Exumas or Out Islands, but that does not mean we would be unaffected in the long run. One cannot help but catch a whiff of the same Nassau corruption in the mooring scheme and crazy fee increases. Both were rolled out with the kind of stealth and suddeness that suggest, as American prosecutors like to say, “a cognizance of guilt.”

The Bahamas enacted some anti-corruption laws in response to the drug scandal, but an opposing senator this week noted that the actual enforcement budget was only $30,000 and no results have been produced.

(By the way, it is not too farfetched to think that these laws may have been dictated to Bahamian leaders by the U.S. Justice Department via State, in exchange for not indicting that “high-ranking politician” and possibly destabilizing or—dare I say it—decapitating an allied government.)

Interestingly, the institutions that track government corruption around the world based on measurable factors do not rate the Bahamas all that high in malfeasance. My conclusion is that the rankings must be based on lagging indicators.

Altogether this is a tragic state of affairs, especially for honest Bahamians. Their island nation, a place of beauty, had also been a place of normalcy for cruisers, not beset by the thefts and thuggery of the lower Caribbean, nor the endemic official corruption at the retail level in many Latin American ports, nor the ever-shrinking options for anchoring of Florida waters.

Folks, I’m taking tomorrow off. Maybe Monday too.

As always, comes the pitch: If you’ve been with Loose Cannon for a while, and you like what you’ve been reading, and you can afford it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. There’s more where this came from.

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