In a televised speech to his country Monday, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding said he would finally turn an alleged international drug lord over to U.S. authorities and offered his “deepest apologies” for dragging out the extradition dispute and hiring Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to lobby in connection with it.
But even as he announced that he was ready to end the nine-month-long standoff over whether Christoper “Dudus” Coke would indeed be extradited to the U.S., Golding continued to insist that it was his ruling Jamaica Labour Party — not the Jamaican government itself — that hired Manatt and paid the firm roughly $50,000 to intervene in the matter with U.S. officials.
