British banker Hywel Jones left in coma after Bahamas gun ambush
POLICE in the Bahamas are investigating the execution-style shooting of a British banker. Hywel Jones, 55, originally from north Wales, was shot in the back of the head by a gunman waiting in ambush outside the office of his offshore financial services company in Nassau, the country’s capital.
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| President of Britannia Consulting Group, Hywel Jones |
| Courtesy Bahamas Financial Services Review |
Yesterday, he was critically ill in a coma and under police guard after emergency surgery. It is believed the bullet passed through his head.
His brother has flown from California to be at his bedside and to comfort their elderly mother, who had moved from Wales to live near her son.
Jones was arriving for work when he was shot. The gunman, described as a “slim, dark male”, escaped on a motorcycle.
The victim had worked for NatWest in Britain before moving to the Bahamas in the late 1990s. He is the former director of the Bankers’ Association of the Bahamas and the Bahamas Institute of Bankers.
Assistant Superintendent Leon Bethel, the officer leading the investigation, said he believed several people had witnessed the shooting last Wednesday but were afraid to come forward. Police are unaware of a motive but Bethel said Jones was not a random target.
The banker told a journalist friend in Miami weeks before the attack that he feared for his safety and claimed he had been beaten up by two people a few weeks earlier.
The friend, David Marchant, also from Wales, publishes a newsletter called Offshore Alert, which exposes financial irregularities in the Caribbean. He said: “The Bahamas needs to solve this murder attempt for the reputation of its financial sector, which it relies upon for wealth.
“I might take it upon myself to investigate this case.”
Police are trying to establish whether the shooting was linked to Jones’s private life or financial affairs. Jones is divorced and has had several girlfriends.
Bethel said: “We have interviewed some of his family members. They have suspicions about why he was shot, but I cannot repeat them at this time as it may jeopardise the success of our investigations.”
Lester Turnquest, a former MP on the island and a former business partner of Jones, described him as someone who “thrived on excitement and living close to the edge”.
Despite a high murder rate in the Bahamas, attacks on expats are rare. There was a spate of killings during drug wars in the 1980s, when the Medellin cartel from Colombia was trying to set up staging posts and money-laundering systems.
Earlier this month Maria Van Beek, the insurance commissioner of Guyana, was shot in the stomach as she drove to work. She and regulators in the Bahamas had been involved in liquidating an insurance company to protect depositors.
The Foreign Office in London said it was in contact with the Bahamian authorities over Jones’s shooting.
[This is now thought to be a Stanford-connected liquidation. Recall that Stanford's lone British accountant on Antigua, whose accounting contract with Stanford ended on 31st December 2008, died suddenly and mysteriously on New Year's Day. There is speculation that Stanford International controlled some of the Japanese (Yamashita) gold.]
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