By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

SHANE Gibson has reached a $2.5 million settlement with the government after making claims of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment following his acquittal in a bribery trial in 2019.

One of his lawyers, Owen Wells, said the amount of the settlement was benchmarked against similar cases but declined to say how much was agreed.

However, a well-placed source confirmed the $2.5m settlement amount.

Mr Wells said: “The settlement sum was a figure due to Mr Gibson for his malicious prosecution claim. It includes costs awarded to all his counsels and disbursements made by him from 2017 when he was charged until 2022 upon the settlement of the case. In our view we reached a settlement that was fair to both sides.”

It took jurors less than two hours to acquit Mr Gibson of 13 bribery charges. Afterwards, the former Cabinet minister’s lawyers argued his case was tainted with “wickedness” and “injustice” from the start. They pointed to the Minnis administration’s 2017 campaign promise to jail corrupt government officials and to the actions of a senior police investigator who met key witnesses to align their stories.

Mr Gibson was accused of soliciting and accepting more than $200,000 in bribes from Jonathan Ash for expediting payments the contractor was owed for work done after Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Neither Attorney General Ryan Pinder nor Mr Gibson responded to messages before press time last night.

Mr Gibson was one of several high-profile Progressive Liberal Party figures who were charged with crimes after the Minnis administration won the 2017 general election. Among the others, former Public Hospitals Authority Chairman Frank Smith was also acquitted of bribery charges and Kenred Dorsett, the former minister of environment, recently had his case dropped.

• This article has been amended from the print version to include the settlement amount given to Mr Gibson.