There has been much finger-pointing in recent days in relation to Operations Tempura and Cealt, the ongoing anti-corruption investigations involving the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS), and last week H.E the Governor Stuart Jack also got into the act in an attempt to distance himself from some of the controversy and at the same time lay blame where it properly belongs.

In recent Finance Committee proceedings, the Leader of Government Business, Hon. McKeeva Bush, attempted to blame the previous government for the costs of the two investigations, which are widely regarded as excessive.

However, in doing so, Mr Bush conveniently ignores his own instrumental role as then Leader of the Opposition in bringing the Metropolitan Police teams here in the first place.

If Mr Bush had not taken it upon himself to lend credibility and authority to the false allegations made by this newspaper’s former employee Lyndon Martin, things may have taken an entirely different and certainly less expensive turn.

As the Governor has reminded us, the original request to the Met for assistance was initiated by then Commissioner of Police, Stuart Kernohan, not by the Governor.

And once here, the Governor says, the financial aspects of the investigation were not handled by him: “I did not, for example, decide the contractual terms on which the government hired the services of the Tempura and Cealt investigators.”

Such contractual terms have come in for separate criticism from Auditor General Dan Duguay, who concluded that the government did not have adequate oversight and management processes in place to manage contracts and report expenditures to the Cabinet as well as providing the means to ensure due regard for value-for-money.

One notable feature of the entire episode is that those responsible for dealing with the expense of the two investigations seem to be as “undercover” as the original Met investigators when they first arrived in the Cayman Islands.

Members of the previous government administration, now in opposition, claim they were not responsible and go on to point out that they were continually complaining at the mounting costs.

There may be some truth in this because at one point the Cabinet at that time refused to pay the money then due and the Governor had to exercise his reserve powers to require such payment out of the Cayman Islands treasury – according to last week’s release, the only time he has had to do so (on instructions from the Secretary of State in London) during his four-year term of office.

Even the Auditor General’s report refers to a generic “Government”, without specifying the individuals and/or departments involved, especially when it comes to the management response to his criticisms.

However, as the Governor points out, the Public Management and Finance Law does not give him any spending powers. Those powers are vested in Chief Officers working with budgets approved by the Cabinet – which in practice means the elected Ministers – and ultimately by the Legislative Assembly.

Perhaps someone will see fit to bring some clarity to the situation at some point but, financial issues aside, there are apparently still some serious issues remaining that require to be investigated to their logical conclusion.

According to the Governor these are allegations of very serious criminality and we can only assume that he has chosen his words carefully in describing them thus.

If so, we must agree with him that the investigative process must be continued until a resolution is reached.

Yes, some local politicians and no doubt others would like ongoing investigations to be dropped but their motives may be self-serving or they may be, as the Governor says, delusional if they think that this country is totally free of any corrupt or unethical behaviour in the police or elsewhere in public life, or that such problems could not occur in the future.

There has always been a suspicion that the vigorous resistance in some local circles to the activities of the anti-corruption investigators may be motivated more by the sensitive toes they were stepping on rather than any genuine belief that the investigations in question were not needed.

We have no way of knowing at this point if or when the full details of what has been going on will ever be revealed fully but we certainly join with the Governor in looking forward to the day when the whole story can be told.