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at last, the island accepts that it is not competent (incompetent?) to deal with serious crime and calls in New Scotland Yard.  It is a shame that the professionals are only called in for corporate crime and not criminal matters ... or could that lead to further arrests of Bermuda police officers?

Two senior Scotland Yard detectives have arrived on the Island to help Police in the Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC) corruption inquiry, The Royal Gazette can reveal. The officers arrived on Sunday from London and are spending around week advising the Commercial Crime Unit team probing BHC. It is understood the Scotland Yard fraud officers, one of whom is a chief superintendent, will give local officers an overview of the investigation and advice on which lines of inquiry might be worth pursuing further.
The fact that a fraud squad chief superintendent from London has been called in indicates Police in Bermuda are taking allegations surrounding the corporation extremely seriously.  Police have been investigating BHC since at least March when Auditor General Larry Dennis was called in to review accounting procedures at the quango amid claims of corruption, massive over-payments to some contractors and lack of financial accountability.

Bermuda Police did not respond to calls from The Royal Gazette yesterday to confirm the Scotland Yard officers are here, but the newspaper has had the story verified by reliable sources.
Mr. Dennis has completed his report for Premier Jennifer Smith, but the Auditor General has not made it public because of legal advice he received that it may prejudice any criminal trials which may arise from the Police investigation. Former BHC general manager Raymonde Dill, who was sacked in August along with property manager Terrance Smith, broke his silence on the scandal two weeks ago and claimed Police would find no evidence of criminal activity at the corporation.  Mr. Dill told the Bermuda Sun earlier this month: "To my knowledge there is nothing he (Mr. Dennis) could have found in the transactions of the BHC that were of a criminal nature.  "The Auditor General may have had issues with some of the processes and some of the procedures, but these are policy issues to be dealt with internally, not criminal issues."  Part of the controversy surrounded payments of $810,940 over seven months to contractor Paul Young.  Mr. Dill told the Sun the payments were above board but said it would be "unrealistic" to expect Mr. Young to give a detailed account of how the money was spent.  And Mr. Young was unable to give a detailed explanation to the newspaper about how the cash was spent.

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