May 11, 2009 - Cem Kinay of Dellis Cay and Joe Grant's Cay Fame

What an interesting week last week was!

On Wednesday April 29, 2009 we received an email from attorneys representing Dr. Cem Kinay and his corporations, Turks Limited (Dellis Cay), and Star Platinum Island Limited (Joe Grant’s Cay).

[Disgraced former Premier Michael Misick and Cem Kinay]

They claimed that there were 18 articles posted on the TCI Journal that misrepresented their clients, and gave us 24 hours to remove them.

None of the articles were written by the Editors of the Journal. 

ALL of the articles pertained mainly to government, meaning public, assets (crown land), government regulations (labour laws), government immigration laws (belongership), and political donations. 

We wrote to the attorneys on the 30^th of April and said:

Re: Turks Limited and Dr. Cem Kinay

Thank-you for your letter to the Editors of the TCI Journal dated April 29,
2009.

We take all comments about the accuracy of our articles seriously and will
review in detail the contents of your letter.

Since you highlight 18 articles, some quite lengthy, some going back 7
months, we would appreciate it if you could highlight verbatim what it is
in each article that you question.  Upon receiving your detailed response,
we will examine the articles, contact the writers where possible, and
respond in detail as quickly as we can.

We are unclear why you would not wish for us to publish your letter for the
benefit of the rest of our community.  We will however not do so for the
moment, nor are we really interested in publishing our ongoing
communication with you as long as the discussions are civil and respectful.
 We however reserve the right to share all correspondence with the wider
community.

To help in the certainty of communication, may we recommend that all
correspondence be sent to editors@tcijournal.com and tcijournal@gmail.com.
We will resend this reply from tcijournal@gmail.com so that you have the
address on file as well.


Kindest Regards,
Editors@TCIJournal.com

On May 1rst the attorneys wrote back acknowledging our letter and saying they would get back to us with the details.

In the meanwhile they forwarded documentation that they were seeking a Court Order, to be heard on May 7^th in London England, forcing the TCI Journal’s hosting company to reveal who the owners of the site are, as well as forcing the domain registry company, based in the Netherlands, to reveal who registered the domain “tcijournal.com” .

Now, even though they wanted us to act within 24 hours, it was approximately 113 hours after our request that we received a table listing, this time 17 articles, exactly what it was that Cem Kinay and his attorneys found objectionable.

In the meanwhile, on Tues. May 5, we found out that our hosting company in Asia had a UK corporate connection and had suspended our site upon receiving Cem Kinay’s motion for a Court Order, even before we had a chance to respond. In fact even before we received the information about what it was exactly about each article that Cem Kinay objected to.

The Articles

None of the articles mentioned were written by the Editors of the TCI Journal.

ALL of the articles pertain mainly to government, meaning public, assets (crown land), government regulations (labour laws), government immigration laws (belongership), and political donations. 

Of the 17 articles they detailed, 3 articles were from 2008. Two of these three dealt with labour issues and were letters to the editors. The other dealt with the events surrounding Michael Misick’s attempt to sell the farm in Kew, North Caicos, to Dellis Cay.

In the two articles that speak about jobs and labour, which are over 6 months old, we have added the following point for the sake of clarification:

[Editors Note: - May 10, 2009....According to the TCINetNews.com, the PNP government stated in the House of Assembly on May 1, 2009 - "The government reported that the $900 million dollar Dellis Cay project is employing 297 people, of which 275 are of Turkish descent, 17 more are TCIslanders, and the balance a mixture of ten different nationalities."] 

The other 14 articles were those involved mainly in reporting on the oral hearings of the Commission of Inquiry or were directly based upon evidence heard at the oral hearings.

The articles dealt with:

• Dr. Cem Kinay's alleged political donation of $500,000 that he made to disgraced former Premier Michael Misick through his brother Chal Misick.
• Dr. Cem Kinay's involvement with the purchase of 200 acres of Crown land (land owned by the government) on the small island of Joe Grant's Cay for less than $4 million dollars. Those 200 acres were valued in many different ways. One estimate by the highly respected government appraiser valued the 200 acres closer to $65 - $100 million.
• Dr. Cem Kinay's use of several hundred foreign low cost labourers (mainly from Turkey) on his resort development of Dellis Cay.
• Dr. Cem Kinay's receiving of Belongership, citizenship, in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• Dr. Cem Kinay's development of Dellis Cay's involvement with the differing accounts surrounding the alleged attempt by Michael Misick to sell the Government farm in Kew, North Caicos.

Of the 14 articles that were written after the start of the oral hearings, 3 were by Shaun Malcolm, 10 by Diana de Gara, and one a letter to the Editors.

Two of Mr. Malcolm’s articles were reports from the hearings. They were Day 12, and Day 19 of the hearings.   Mr. Malcolm said to us he stands behind his reporting on those days. Readers can go to the transcript of the hearings on those days to judge their accuracy.  On Day 19, he has added a few words to clarify that the statements he makes come from the testimony given at the oral hearings.

The third article of Mr. Malcolm’s speaks for itself. Mr. Malcolm has added a few words to clarify the meaning. No one could misunderstand what he means, or as is our feeling, disagree with the content of his article.

The articles by Diana were all informed by the content of the oral hearings. She deals with her points with her usual caustic flair, but they all deal with the bullet points listed above. One article she has left as is. The other articles have a few qualifiers added to them, some qualifiers stating when the content is her opinion, others when things are alleged, but none of the articles have been removed. 

The final letter to the editors deals with how “empowering” Belongers with crown land seems to have helped mainly those close to Michael Misick or newly minted Belongers. 

The website is now up and running again. Let us see what happens next.   As we have mentioned before, ALL of the articles pertain mainly to government, meaning public, assets (crown land), government regulations (labour laws), government immigration laws (belongership), and political donations. 

According to the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary's press release of a few days ago:

Commenting on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day in 2009, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said:

"Freedom for the media to report and analyse what is going on in the world is of fundamental importance in holding governments to account. We must all increase our efforts to ensure that these values are protected at a time when the threat to the safety of journalists doing their jobs remains unacceptably high."

It will depend upon Cem Kinay and his attorneys whether we bring any more attention to the articles he mentions or their content. We feel we have adequately addressed his comments. Until then, we will leave our comments limited to this current article.

We realize we must fight on behalf of the right of free speech. We hope in our actions here we are finding the right balance in protecting the rights of all citizens within our country.

Below is our last letter to Cem Kinay and his attorneys last Friday; and now also our summation of this update on the events of the last week.

Dear Ms. Lambert,

For sake of clarification only, let us clearly state that the ownership of any article posted on the TCI Journal is that by its author and not by the Journal.

We do not take possession of any article nor do we proceed to license them further, at this time.

As you have probably seen in the major media in England, from the reporting of the discussions held in the British Parliament on April 23, 2009; the Turks and Caicos Islands have gone through an unprecedented period of corruption and malfeasance by government officials and by developers taking advantage of their relationships with these corrupt officials. 

This period of corruption and malfeasance has caused the rare step of an Order in Council to be placed before her Majesty the Queen, and then before the UK Parliament, to suspend the Constitution of the Turks and Caicos.  That Order has now been approved by Parliament.  An extraordinary event.

We are a small territory of 12,000 citizens and a total of 30,000 residents.  The actions of our politicians and their wealthy associates has led us to this situation where now our Constitution is to be suspended.  And has left us with our treasury essentially bankrupt.

We at the Journal have tried to report accurately what has/is occurring in our Country.  As you may have seen by the statements of Sir John Stanley, the respected member of the British Foreign Affairs Committee, the only other place he has visited where people live in as much fear and intimidation as the Turks and Caicos Islands, is the People's Republic of China.

It is extraordinary for this level of fear and intimidation to be occurring in a BritishTerritory. 

Intimidation of the press has been a key part of the fear and intimidation that Sir Stanley speaks about.  We hope that Dr. Kinay's actions are not meant to feed or add to the fear and intimidation that has been present.  This intimidation is not some abstract concept.  It is real.  People who have rightly, as free men and women, questioned the actions of power and wealth within our country have been threatened and intimated into silence.  That is why the UK Parliament is taking such drastic actions. 

The TCI Journal always has striven to be accurate and respectful of the rights of all citizens and residents; be they journalists, politicians or developers.

Any future reporting or commentaries about Dr. Cem Kinay and his developments of Dellis Cay and Joe Grant's Cay will be based upon his actions within our community, and upon the findings of the forth coming Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry looking into corruption and serious dishonesty involving present and recent Members of the House of Assembly of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Kindest Regards,
Editors@TCIJournal.com