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Compass News
Compass News – 8 July 2025
Efforts to uncover the cause of the Bodden Town house explosion remain ongoing.
The long-standing local business, Cathy Church’s Photo Centre, has ceased operations.
The Constitutional Commission saw three new appointees on Friday – just in time for Constitution Day.
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Cayman Compass
Chasing gold: From the Amazon to the Alps, the inside story of Cayman’s Operation El Niño
Operation El Niño exposed the methods of criminal gangs smuggling dirty gold out of illegal mines in the poorly policed Amazonian borderlands between Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil. The Cayman-led investigation did not end with the hoped-for money-laundering convictions, but both the plane and some $6 million of gold were seized by investigators as criminal profits linked to cartels. The Cayman Compass obtained a court order to access the case file and help tell the full story from shipment to seizure.
The gold itself was unmagnificent – 169 nuggets of varying shapes and sizes, some no bigger than coins, others crudely fashioned into thick bars and fat gleaming hearts you could balance in the palm of your hand.
It was sold at auction in London for £5,367,658.22 (about CI$6.1 million) and the proceeds were split three ways.
Just over £2 million went to the UK treasury, £2 million to the Cayman Islands government and £1 million to four companies who had contested its seizure as the proceeds of crime.
