While crime spirals out of control in the Bahamas, and former DPM Cynthia Pratt prattles on about young Bahamians turning to lives of crime, a numbers crook has made so much illegal money, he is turning his crooked empire into a legitimate business.<\/p>\n
The Tribune reports that numbers kingpin Craig Flowers, and his FML Group of Companies, has purchased the Chez Willie property on West Bay Street.<\/p>\n
Flowers says the acquisition will kickstart the transformation of the old property, formerly a popular Bahamian restaurant, into a quasi-Museum\/office space for the company.<\/p>\n
At the back of the building, built with allegedly illegal funds, is the D’Aguilar art gallery that opens twice per week.<\/p>\n
The legitimisation of numbers money is another case of dirty money being laundered into something more legitimate.<\/p>\n
This is, of course, nothing new in The Bahamas, where drug smugglers from the Eighties amassed their fortunes, money which still fuels their criminal offspring even today.<\/p>\n
One wonders if members of certain Bahamian families would be so well-off if it weren’t for the drug business of the eighties.<\/p>\n
Now, we have a new way to make money and buy respectability in The Bahamas. Illegal numbers.<\/p>\n
By making secret, but substantial, contributions to political parties, the numbers kingpins have been able to keep the police off their backs, save for an occasional bust for public relations purposes.<\/p>\n
In many modern cultures, that would be considered bribery, but this is the Bahamas, where crime pays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nothing says “crime pays” more than an illegal numbers kingpin becoming a legitimate businessman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[93,31],"class_list":["post-2559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-corruption","tag-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}