Claude Skelton Cline
Popular BVI pastor and radio personality Claude Skelton Cline has been arrested in the British Virgin Islands and charged with obtaining property by deception, false accounting, and proceeds of crime.
Last March, then-Governor John Rankin announced that one of the audits recommended by the Commission of Inquiry in the British Virgin Islands examined government contracts handed to Mr. Cline between 2008 and 2010. The audit found “failures in good governance and improper use of public funds,” according to Mr. Rankin, and a report had been sent to the Office of the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecution, and the police.
The talk show host’s arrest on Friday, say BVI police, comes as a result of a criminal investigation spanning some 18 months, triggered by the findings of that audit. With over $350,000 paid to Mr. Cline across an over two-year timespan and little to show for it, auditors claimed that Mr. Cline’s consultancy with the government achieved nothing except reportedly lining his pockets.
“The government failed to receive value for money on these contracts,” the report concludes. In response to the audit findings being made public last year, Mr. Cline declared his innocence, saying that he “did a phenomenal job for my part in a two-part contractual arrangement.”
According to Mr. Cline at the time, “I feel no compunction to defend myself.”
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