Doug Manchester to be Bahama Papa for U.S.?

The BahamasPress.com is an online news operation in the Bahamas. On December 27, it reported, "Lyford Cay resident Papa Doug Manchester is being tipped as the next U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas under a Trump Administration." (Lyford Cay is a gated community on New Providence Island, Bahamas, considered one of the most affluent and exclusive communities in the world.)

I cannot find that other media have followed this or whether BahamasPress.com covered it again. I phoned Manchester's office and asked one of his assistants if he is in the running for ambassador to the Bahamas. She replied, "Not to my knowledge, no." She quickly added, "I don't want to discuss this with you" and hung up. I have not heard back from the Bahamas government.

Manchester is a multimillionaire real estate developer who once owned the San Diego Union-Tribune.

After Fidel Castro drove the American Mafia out of Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s, gangsters decided to make the Bahamas their next offshore gambling haven. Mob financier Meyer Lansky was the major planner. Casinos were set up in the Bahamas. But after the Bahamas got their freedom from Great Britain in 1973, the islands were not so friendly to mobsters, who moved their banking to the Cayman Islands.

The Bahamas were one of the early offshore banking havens. In 2009, when many nations were cracking down on offshore havens, Prime minister Hubert Ingraham said that banking secrecy was one of the pillars of the 50-year-old financial services sector, and there is no plan to change them. However, the Bahamas are not now considered one of the major bank-secrecy havens. Under certain circumstances, it will provide information to foreign governments.