London Times Article:ABC News Says Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding Is Linked To Drug Lord Christopher Coke!!!

From The Times

May 27, 2010

Jamaican leader denies link to Shower Posse gangsters

Giles Whittell, Washington

Washington threw its support behind the Jamaican Government in the hunt for Mr Coke last night while its Prime Minister was forced to confront claims that he has been named in official US documents as an associate of the alleged drug baron.While the search for Mr Coke continued in Kingston on streets mainly emptied of people by the violence, Bruce Golding’s office accused Western media of mounting a conspiracy to undermine his democratically elected Government.

In a statement Mr Golding “categorically denied and dismissed as extremely offensive” an ABC News report that he had been identified in an American government report as a “known criminal affiliate” of Mr Coke. The statement also condemned an article in The Independent of London that attempted to link Mr Golding to the Shower Posse, the gang based in Tivoli Gardens district of Kingston that experts say serves as the enforcement arm of Mr Coke’s alleged drug business.

Mr Golding said in the statement that both news organisations, “by seeking to link him personally with the alleged drug kingpin, were clearly part of a conspiracy to undermine the duly elected Government of Jamaica”.

ABC stood by its report last night. Experts in the US and Jamaica, who claim to have seen the document mentioned in the network’s report, said it was an affidavit submitted as part of a grand jury investigation in New York, where Mr Coke will be tried if he can be found and extradited. The affidavit is based on a telephone call between Mr Golding and Mr Coke, said one source who asked to remain anonymous.

Until two weeks ago Mr Golding was refusing to co-operate with US efforts to extradite Mr Coke, claiming that the request was based partly on illegally obtained wiretap evidence from intercepted telephone calls.

According to US officials cited in the ABC report, Mr Golding has recently been monitored talking to Mr Coke by telephone at his Tivoli Gardens base.

Amid calls for his resignation after he admitted to hiring a Californian law firm to lobby the US Government on Mr Coke’s behalf, Mr Golding pledged to co-operate in the hunt for his country’s most notorious drug baron.

Last night Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman, said: “We are absolutely working with the Government of Jamaica and with the Prime Minister in the effort to strengthen the rule of law in his country and arrest Mr Coke.”

Despite speculation that Mr Coke may have fled Kingston or even the country, Mr Luoma-Overstreet said that the focus of the search remained in Tivoli Gardens.

Mr Golding’s difficulties are dwarfed by those of Mr Coke but they are still significant. The root cause of his political danger is his admission of having hired the law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips as part of his nine-month effort to resist Mr Coke’s extradition. The arrangement came to light because of a requirement under the US Foreign Agent Registration Act for all lobbyists representing foreign clients to clear them with the US Government.

“At best he was using taxpayers’ money to hire a huge lobbying firm to lobby on behalf of a fugitive,” Professor David Rowe, a Miami-based expert in Jamaican law, told The Times. “At worst he used the power of his Government to enable a drug lord to lobby the White House.”

Mr Golding said initially that the firm had been retained by the Jamaican Government, then altered his position, claiming that the deal had been struck by his ruling Labour Party, the JLP.

It remains unclear what headway if any Manatt, Phelps and Phillips made in pressing Mr Coke’s case against extradition, which is based on the claim that he is a legitimate businessman and generous philanthropist on whom thousands of impoverished Jamaicans depend.

Charles Manatt, the founder of the firm, is a prominent Democrat and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is said to maintain friendly relations with the Obamas.