Barbados coast guard head confirms WikiLeaks chat
(Barbados Nation) World whistle-blower website WikiLeaks has suggested there was “internal corruption” in the Barbados Coast Guard (BCG), and that a new commander was drafted in two years ago to “clean house”.
According to a WikiLeaks December 2009 confidential document purported to originate from the United States Embassy in Barbados, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard, Commander Sean Reece (then Lieutenant Commander) had confirmed, in a meeting with then Charge d’Affaires Dr Brent Hardt, that he had been brought in to “weed out internal corruption” within the maritime arm of the Barbados Defence Force.
The document added that, in Reece’s effort to identify and isolate potentially corrupt officers and seamen, he had mandated all officers to pass a polygraph examination, and some officers had been moved to non-sensitive slots because of their polygraph results.
But Reece told the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday that while he had in fact had an informal discussion with Hardt after a tour of the new embassy building in Wildey, he informed Hardt that he had been offered and had accepted the command post despite his infantry background in the Regiment because the former Coast Guard commander, had served his time and had been given a new appointment while the next officer in line was somewhat junior.
