Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. began Monday’s Government House briefing by acknowledging the recent conviction of his former Sports, Parks and Recreation Commissioner, Calvert White, and business owner Benjamin Hendricks on charges of wire fraud and bribery.
Friday, he said, “was not a good day for the Virgin Islands by any stretch of the imagination.”
“The conviction of someone who once held a position of public trust is a painful reminder that public service is a sacred responsibility. Now when that trust is broken, the consequences are real and lasting. It is difficult to watch a young Virgin Islander — one I considered a friend, and almost family, one full of promise and potential — fall from grace.”
Though “justice has been served,” Bryan said, the damage to the territory, its reputation and his administration’s integrity “runs very deep.”
“That damage is irreparable, but this moment should serve as a clear and fair warning to anyone entrusted with the public’s confidence that you are expected to act with honor and accountability,” he said. “If that trust is betrayed, there is a price to pay, and you will be held accountable.”
Over the course of White and Hendricks’s weeklong trial, prosecutors showed bank statements, text exchanges and played recordings of multiple phone calls and conversations in which the defendants could be heard discussing a scheme to steer a federally-funded government contract in exchange for a $16,000 bribe to a former contractor and cooperating witness, David Whitaker. At the time Whitaker said he was approached by White and Hendricks, he was already working with federal agents investigating former Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and former Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal, who were indicted at the same time in January.
At one point, according to the evidence shown at trial, Whitaker bragged to the defendants about his connections with O’Neal, Martinez, and Bryan. Asked Monday why Whitaker would say that, Bryan said he didn’t know.
“It seems to me, and maybe I shouldn’t say that, but this person was looking to create a name for himself by incriminating government officials and seeking ways to make us look bad … that’s not an excuse in any way for any action that was taken,” he said. “It’s just obvious they were making inroads into public officials.”
Bryan noted that Whitaker’s involvement began with the “discovery” of listening devices in several government offices. Whitaker has admitted to planting the devices himself, and he told the court last week that he did so at Martinez’s direction. He then charged the government to perform sweeps of its offices.
“He came in there with the team looking for bugs that were allegedly in the offices,” Bryan said Monday. “And while he was in Government House, all of their actions were supervised by our … former chief of staff, Karl Knight. They went in the bathroom — away from everybody’s view — and the guy was like, ‘aha! See one here?’ You know, it was a scam from the beginning.”
Bryan added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in “because we were suspicious.”
“We’re the ones that called them in to find out what was going on with this guy,” he said.
Federal prosecutors last week showed jurors how White manipulated the V.I. Property and Procurement’s bid process to make sure a surveillance camera contract went to Whitaker’s company — Mon Ethos Pro Support — including by showing Whitaker’s confidential bid information from competitors. On Monday, Bryan said the evaluation process should be recorded — on camera — “so anything you say in those rooms, while deciding on those … if something comes up, we’ll always be able to go back to the tapes and find out what was discussed.”
Though Bryan said he’s “pretty confident in P and P’s evaluation and contract process,” multiple procurement contracts entered into by other government agencies have been the subject of lawsuits, complaints, and other federal fraud cases.
In March, former V.I. Housing Finance Authority executive Darin Richardson was convicted of criminal conflict of interest, making material false statements to a federal agent and other charges after a jury found that he had improperly awarded a warehouse services contract to manage lumber for disaster recovery projects.
More recently, a U.S. District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order against VIHFA to an environmental engineering and consulting firm, which alleged a pattern of awarding “gross inflated” contracts, violations of the agency’s own procurement policies and conflicts of interest. Chief Judge Robert Molloy wrote that the evidence “strongly suggests that VIHFA intentionally treated similarly situated vendors differently absent a rational basis to do so and failed to follow its own procurement regulations.”
Companies have also cried foul over multimillion-dollar contracts awarded by the V.I. Public Finance Authority and Disaster Recovery Office. In September, construction firm Hill International filed a lawsuit after the agencies awarded a lucrative contract to oversee the territory’s disaster recovery efforts to a competitor whose bid was $107 million more than Hill’s own. A federal magistrate judge recommended that the case be dismissed in March.
