By: Staff Writer
February 10, 2026
A decade-long corruption trial in the Turks and Caicos Islands ended on Wednesday with guilty verdicts against the territory’s former premier, Michael Missick and his brother along with a former cabinet minister.
Justice Rajendra Narine will on May 4 this year hear arguments in the sentencing phase of the case against the trio.
Misick, along with his brother, attorney Thomas Chalmers ‘Chal’ Misick, and former government minister McAllister Hanchell, had been slapped with multiple charges stemming from a long-running corruption investigation involving more than $20 million in alleged bribes, fraudulent land deals, and money laundering.
The Trinidad-born judge delivered his verdict during a four-hour hearing after he had presided over the matter without a jury.
The three men were granted bail pending sentencing but are barred from leaving the island. Bail was set at US$15 million for the former premier, US$13 million for his brother and US$4 million for Hanchell. The court is also expected to rule at a later date on the confiscation of properties valued at an estimated US$25 million.
Misick was found guilty of three counts of bribery related to transactions involving the Beaches resort group and Crown land on Salt Cay and West Caicos. Hanchell was convicted on two counts of bribery tied to land deals on Salt Cay and West Caicos, while Chal Misick was found guilty on four counts of money laundering.
The court heard that the scheme involved corrupt payments totalling approximately US$14.2 million linked to Salt Cay developments, US$4.7 million tied to West Caicos and about US$2 million connected to Beaches-related transactions.
Charges were first brought in 2011, but legal wrangling and sufficiency hearings delayed the trial’s formal start until December 2015.
The former premier, who was arrested in Brazil in December 2012 and later extradited to the TCI, was found guilty in relation to land on West Caicos.
According to the charge, between November 1, 2006 and May 1, 2008, he accepted inducements directly or indirectly from the Logwood Development Company and related and connected entities” by unlawful corrupt payments or other rewards in the form of cash, credit, entertainment and other advantages, whilst serving as a Minister of the Crown in the Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands so that he would act in a way that was contrary to the ordinary rules of honesty and integrity expected of Ministers of the Crown.”