(CNS): Former CIFA and CONCACAF executives Canover Watson and Bruce Blake were both sent to jail by Chief Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale on Wednesday, following their conviction in October last year in relation to a football fraud.

While Watson was handed an eight-year term, reflecting his leading role in the fraud and money laundering, Bruce Blake was jailed for two years for false accounting.

Although Blake’s lawyers had urged the court to suspend his time behind bars, and despite his previous clean record and other significant personal mitigation, the chief justice said the “gravity of the offending” warranted an immediate custodial sentence.

However, since Watson had been convicted of a long list of serious offences and had previously been convicted in relation to the CarePay case, there was never much doubt that he was facing a fairly long time behind bars, especially given the view the judge took about the level of harm caused and the culpability he had for the crimes he committed.

As a result, both men’s bail was revoked and they were taken into custody.

As she handed down the sentences, the chief justice noted the “disappointment” of the whole country for what the men had done. She said they were “the best of Cayman” and the “hopes of a nation” who had been community leaders but had squandered their potential. “We are so disappointed,” she added.

CJ Ramsay-Hale set out in detail the reasons for the prison time she had allocated to both men for each of the offences for which they were convicted. She also noted the aggravating factor of the impact of what they had done on the wider jurisdiction, the harm to the financial services sector and the breach of trust committed by both men.

The charges were that Watson had submitted $1.5 million worth of invoices to the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) for equipment that was either never supplied or was supplied at overinflated prices. He had partnered with a Pakistan-based manufacturing company to supply the gear but had also set up a number of shell companies using similar names, which were then used to launder the money.

Watson, with Blake’s help, was also accused of using the bank accounts of the Cayman Islands Football Association, for which he was treasurer at the time, to move the money through Cayman by creating loans to CIFA, which were then turned into sponsorship deals.

But following a lengthy and complex trial, there are still a number of unanswered questions surrounding the case, including the involvement of Jeffery Webb, a former FIFA VP and president of CONCACAF and CIFA, and CONCACAF general secretary Enrique Sanz, who were both found guilty of accepting huge bribes over competitions and sponsorship during the global FIFA scandal. Neither of them have been charged in this case.

Although the case against Watson was based on the idea that he had effectively stolen $1.5 million from CONCACAF through false invoices, he was not charged with theft but with secret commissions. CONCACAF never filed a complaint alleging that they had been a victim of theft, and it was Sanz who signed off on the invoices that Watson had presented.

But based on the idea that Watson, who was still at the time a close business associate of Webb, had defrauded CONCACAF, the crown’s case was that he then set about laundering the money by using offshore accounts based in Panama and, ultimately, the local CIFA accounts.