REGIONAL NEWS

UNWTO secretary general to attend second Global Tourism Resilience Conference in Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica (CMC):

United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Secretary General Zurab Pololikashvili will participate in the highly anticipated second Global Tourism Resilience Conference to be held in Jamaica’s western city of Montego Bay, St James this week.

The two-day conference will include panel discussions, networking opportunities, presentations and lively debates on matters of building resilience in tourism.

This group of experts in their collective fields will gather to collaboratively discuss issues that are central to future-proofing travel and tourism to various disruptions moving forward.

“We are setting the stage for another mega conference geared towards safeguarding our most valuable tourism industry. Building the capacity to respond to and recover from disruptions has become even more critical and the topics and expert thoughts that will be shared over two days will contribute to our resilience building,” said Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett.

Pololikashvili will be a key expert on the first day of the conference on Friday, February 16, on a panel that will be exploring ‘Funding Tourism Resilience’.

“I am looking forward to contributing to this conference, which isn’t just about navigating challenges but about collectively shaping a future where destinations thrive amidst adversity, turning resilience into opportunity,” said Pololikashvili.

The first global tourism resilience conference was held at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus last year.

“The Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre continues to be a beacon of tourism resilience, and this conference is a further step in the right direction in building capacity,” said executive director of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, Professor Lloyd Waller.

“Global disruptions have shown the need for us to build capacity in tourism, as it remains one of the most vulnerable industries.”

As part of the conference agenda, on February 17, Global Tourism Resilience Day will be celebrated for the second time, recognising the official adoption by the United Nations on February 6, 2022, of the resolution to observe the day each year.

There will also be a Tourism Resilience Awards Gala to recognise individuals and organisations that have contributed to building tourism resilience globally.

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Former DEA informant sentenced to life for assassination of Haitian president

MIAMI (CMC):

A former informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Joseph Vincent, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for his role in the July 7, 2021 assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse.

Vincent, a Haitian-American national, admitted to helping plot to kill Moïse in his home in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, including advice about the political landscape and meetings with key community leaders.

Vincent is among 11 defendants in the case, which includes Colombian ex-soldiers and businessmen accused of helping supply funds and weapons and carrying out the night-time attack.

Another defendant, Frederick Joseph Bergmann Jr, also pleaded guilty to a role in Moïse’s assassination on Friday. His sentencing was tentatively set for April 18.

The gunmen had reportedly masqueraded as DEA agents at the time of the attack, although the DEA later said Vincent and another Haitian-American, James Solages, had not been acting on behalf of the agency.

The Haitian ambassador to Washington, Bocchit Edmond, said at the time that Moïse’s killers claimed to be members of the DEA as they entered his guarded residence.

“This was a well-orchestrated commando attack,” Edmond said not long after the killing. “They presented themselves as DEA agents, telling people they had come as part of a DEA operation.”

In videos circulating on social media, a man with an American accent was heard saying in English over a megaphone: “DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.”

Residents reported hearing gunshots and seeing men dressed in black running through the neighbourhood.

Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, was considered the mastermind of the assassination and was sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court judge in Florida last summer.

On Friday, the court ruled that Vincent will be held in a Florida prison.

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Cuba begins drafting report on effects of US blockade

HAVANA, Cuba (CMC):

The agencies of the Central State Administration in Cuba have started the drafting process of a report on the effects of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba, between March 2023 and February 2024.

The tightened genocidal blockade continues to be the main hurdle for the development and welfare of the Cuban people, informed Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry (Minrex by its Spanish acronym).

Minrex added that the meeting, held at the foreign ministry headquarters, was attended by Anayansi Rodriguez Camejo, deputy foreign minister.

Rodriguez Camejo described this process as hard and meticulous, in which are gathered the effects of such unilateral policy in each sector of the Cuban economy and society.

On the basis of the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Foreign Assistance Act, on February 7, 1962, during the administration of John F. Kennedy, an executive order entered into force imposing the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, in which, in addition to economic asphyxiation, it promoted political isolation at the regional and international level.

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Cayman Islands cleared from international blacklists

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (CMC):

The Cayman Islands has been removed from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) list of countries that are required to improve their anti-financial crime regimes.

This marks the first time in several years that this British overseas territory does not appear on any international list that calls the jurisdiction’s role in the global financial system into question.

On Wednesday, the territory was finally removed from the European Union’s list of high-risk countries with anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism and counter-proliferation financing deficiencies.

The Cayman Islands was blacklisted by the FATF several years ago because of the weakness in the prosecution and sanctions regime surrounding financial crime. However, it was removed after more than two years of diplomacy, changes to laws and the prosecution of Canover Watson and Bruce Blake in a scandal related to the regional football association, Concacaf.

That triggered the delisting process for the EU list, as the blacklisting by the FATF was the main reason Cayman’s financial sector found itself on the wrong side of the European Union rules.

The removal from controversial lists is expected to boost the offshore industry’s fortunes.