Records Point to Family Link Between UHWI Medical Chief of Staff and MEDITECH, Raising Conflict-of-Interest Questions
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Dr. Carl Bruce, Medical Chief of Staff at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), appears to be related to a principal of Medical Technologies (MEDITECH) Limited, a medical equipment supplier that has done tens of millions of Jamaican dollars’ worth of business with the state-supported hospital, based on records reviewed by 18° North.
The apparent family relationship, identified through a genealogy search at the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) and other sources, raises questions about whether Bruce had a duty to declare a potential conflict of interest, given his administrative role and board position at UHWI. It also revives longstanding questions about who controls MEDITECH, and whether Bruce has or had any financial connection to the company of which he has denied ownership.
Questions about MEDITECH’s ownership structure date back to a 2016 share dispute in court, where it emerged that the company had a “silent partner.”
An interlocutory injunction granted in that case — before the substantive issues were heard — restrained the parties from publicly disclosing the silent partner’s identity before the trial commenced, citing a prior agreement between the parties due to a “potential conflict of interest.” The injunction didn’t explain the nature of that conflict and only referred to the individual as “A”.
The injunction described the silent partner as a lender “or” investor, which suggests the financial relationship may not necessarily be one of shareholding.
It further described the individual as a cousin of Trudy-Ann Ricketts, a shareholder and director of MEDITECH.
Family ties
At the time of MEDITECH’s incorporation in 2007, Ricketts listed a Pepper, St. Elizabeth address when her ownership of 5,000 of the company’s 50,000 issued shares was recorded.
Bruce, a neurosurgeon, also appears to have family ties to Pepper, with the funeral of his mother, Phyllis Adina Bennett, being held there in 2024, according to a funeral program obtained by 18⁰ North.
Genealogy records at the RGD reviewed by 18° North indicate that Bennett was the aunt of Michael Ricketts, Trudy-Ann Ricketts’ father, which would make Bruce and Ricketts first cousins once removed.
Ricketts became a MEDITECH shareholder and director at age 19, and, at the time, was listed as a venture capitalist and businesswoman. According to her LinkedIn profile — since removed — she graduated four years later in 2011 from the University of Technology, Jamaica with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Up to January 2026, her profile listed her as the office manager of MEDITECH.
The ownership question
The injunction gave two competing narratives about how MEDITECH was formed and financed and why its ownership structure remains opaque.
According to an affidavit cited in the injunction from Athol Hamilton — another MEDITECH director and holder of 5,000 shares — he, having a background as a biologist, and Ricketts were seeking a business opportunity around 2007 when “one of Trudy’s cousins,” also described as his longtime friend, suggested opportunities in medical supplies.
Hamilton further stated that the individual later advanced funds to MEDITECH but didn’t want to become a shareholder due to concerns about a potential conflict of interest given his status at the time. As a result, it was agreed between himself, the silent partner and Winfield Boban — a business associate of the silent partner — that Boban would hold some shares on the silent partner’s behalf as security for the advances.
Reached by phone, Hamilton said he didn’t want to speak with 18° North.
According to company documents, those 40,000 shares — representing the majority of MEDITECH’s 50,000 issued shares at the time — were in 2008 registered in the name of Boban, an American medical devices executive. In 2009, the shares were then transferred to Jamaican attorney Donovan Williams, who became the Member of Parliament for Kingston Central in 2020 and is now State Minister in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.
Boban, who sued MEDITECH in 2016 over ownership of the shares, offered a different account, claiming he, Hamilton, Ricketts and the silent partner agreed to form the company. He told 18⁰ North in 2025 that the company was “my concept” and that Williams was merely holding the shares on his behalf because he wasn’t living in Jamaica at the time. It’s not clear how the share dispute was ultimately resolved as the Supreme Court told 18⁰ North the case is sealed.
In May 2025, Williams, in a publicly-released statement, acknowledged holding the shares in trust and said his lawyers were making arrangements to transfer them to the beneficial owner following the resolution of a share dispute in 2022. A court filing in a separate case involving the Integrity Commission to which all MPs have to report their financial holdings, did reveal that Williams had disclosed holding the MEDITECH shares on Boban’s behalf in 2020, but this may have been before the share dispute case was concluded.
As of January 2026, Williams had surrendered the 40,000 shares back to the company, though they haven’t been reallocated to anyone. There was also a Beneficial Ownership form filed, according to the Companies Office. However, information from that document, while accessible to government procuring entities upon written request, can’t be accessed by journalists or the general public.
Government contracts
MEDITECH drew public attention last year after Opposition Spokesperson on Health Dr. Alfred Dawes alleged that the company overcharged the government’s South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) for a neurosurgical drill — a claim MEDITECH denied and for which it sued Dawes for defamation. (Dawes claims he was never served.)
18⁰ North later reported that MEDITECH had secured more than 220 government contracts worth over J$200 million (US$1.8 million) between 2008 and 2020 from various public bodies, including SERHA, according to the Integrity Commission’s Quarterly Contract Awards database. Thirty-five of those contracts were from UHWI worth $68 million (US$625,345), and more than 80% of those UHWI contracts were awarded through processes in which only a single bid was received — a practice permitted under Jamaican law in certain circumstances.
It’s not known if MEDITECH continues to be a supplier to the hospital because the database doesn’t go past 2020.
Allegations and responses
Following the revelation that MEDITECH had a silent partner, a May 2025 voicenote broadcast on Andre Stephens’ PDTV YouTube program and purportedly attributed to fellow neurosurgeon Dr. Roger Hunter alleged that Bruce was MEDITECH’s “substantive owner.”
Hunter, who has accused Bruce of assault in a separate legal matter, told 18° North that his assertions of Bruce’s ownership were based on his interactions in the industry. He also said Ricketts told him she was Bruce’s niece. (Ricketts is around 19 years younger than Bruce.) Ricketts didn’t respond to questions about the alleged family relationship or whether Bruce played any role in MEDITECH’s business with the government.
Bruce is being represented in the assault case by Williams, according to the Kingston and St. Andrew Parish Court. But, according to his co-counsel Tom Tavares-Finson — another government parliamentarian —he is now out of the matter.
It was following Hunter’s voicenote in May 2025 that 18⁰ North called Boban directly to ask about the MEDITECH share dispute case.
While not offering any documents, Boban hinted that Bruce was involved in the case.
Asked about the status of the shares and why they weren’t yet returned to him and why they were then still in Williams’ name, Boban told 18⁰ North to ask Bruce’s attorney, whom he suggested was Williams. However, when later asked to clarify why he described Williams as Bruce’s attorney if Boban was presumably paying Williams to hold shares on his behalf, Boban, through his lawyer, issued a statement saying his earlier remarks didn’t constitute an official response, though the lawyer didn’t deny what Boban initially said.
The statement added that Boban has had no involvement in the management, operations or decision-making of MEDITECH after 2013 when he resigned as CEO. Boban, thereafter, established another medical supplies company, Surgix Jamaica Ltd., which competes with MEDITECH.
A former employee of Surgix who requested anonymity told 18⁰ North that Boban had repeatedly mentioned to staff members, including the former employee, when he had competitive issues with MEDITECH that Bruce was the primary decisionmaker and owner of MEDITECH. The source said Boban also mentioned that Bruce was involved in the shareholder lawsuit he filed against MEDITECH in 2016, and that Ricketts told the source directly that she was Bruce’s niece.
In a statement issued on May 26, 2025, UHWI CEO Fitzgerald Mitchell defended Bruce, saying, “Dr Bruce is not a shareholder, nor a director in any company that compromises his duties at the UHWI,” according to a report by the Jamaica Observer.
Mitchell is currently on three months’ accrued leave while Jamaica’s police force conducts an investigation following a report by the Auditor General, made public on Jan. 13, 2026, which found a slew of procurement breaches at UHWI. Mitchell said “no response” when asked to comment on the report.
The Observer also reported that in the same statement Bruce said: “I do not own, and have never held, shares in Medical Technologies Limited, nor are any shares being held on my behalf, either directly or indirectly, by anyone associated with the entity or otherwise.
“In my professional capacity, I have provided consultation and conducted due diligence in the health sector from time to time. Any attempt to malign my work or disseminate false narratives linking me to ownership of Medical Technologies Limited is defamatory and will be subject to appropriate legal recourse.”
Bruce did file a declaration action against Hunter in September 2025. However, as of Jan. 15, 2026, the Supreme Court said the specifics of the claim haven’t yet been uploaded to its electronic system. 18° North reached out to the court’s media liaison officer on Feb. 6, 2026 to see if the case had been uploaded, but didn’t yet receive a response.
At a groundbreaking of a new building at UHWI on Aug. 7, 2025, 18⁰ North asked Bruce directly if he was behind MEDITECH — as opposed to whether he owned shares — but he wouldn’t answer the question. Later asked by email if he was a lender or paid consultant to MEDITECH, he also didn’t answer.
At the same groundbreaking, UHWI’s Mitchell told 18° North that he hadn’t examined whether Bruce was a consultant to MEDITECH, saying he hadn’t seen Bruce’s quote referenced in the press release. *18° North has not been able to independently verify the veracity of some of the Observer’s reporting from that release.
Mitchell also said UHWI’s legal team had reviewed whether Bruce was connected to MEDITECH and concluded that “there is no truth in that.”
Oversight questions
On May 28, 2025, two days after UHWI’s statement, the Medical Council of Jamaica (MCJ), the public body that disciplines doctors, voted to suspend Hunter from practice for one year, citing the voicenote among the reasons, according to meeting minutes obtained under the Access to Information Act.
Asked whether the Council had investigated Hunter’s claim about Bruce’s alleged involvement in MEDITECH, MCJ Registrar Jean Williams-Johnson said the matter was not one the Council would act on, describing it as an issue “being investigated by the hospital.”
That stance contrasts with the Council’s own ethics manual, which requires doctors to declare any direct or indirect financial interest in any goods or services — including that of immediate family members — before participating in discussion which would lead to the purchase by a public authority of those goods or services. Failure to do so, it states, may amount to “serious professional misconduct.”
Jamaica’s Public Sector Procurement Regulations, 2008, which were in effect up until 2019, also requires public officers who are directly or indirectly involved in procurement proceedings to declare potential conflicts of interest and personal relationships and refrain from taking part in any decision-making or implementation of contracts where such a conflict exists. A personal relationship was defined in that law as one by blood or marriage up to the third civil degree.
The more recent Public Procurement Act, 2015, now in effect, also requires procuring entities to exclude participants where a conflict of interest is likely to impair the integrity of proceedings and outlines penalties for unlawful influence or deception in procurement processes. There has been no finding that these provisions were breached in relation to Bruce, MEDITECH or UHWI.
Neither Bruce nor UHWI answered an email as to whether Bruce had disclosed his apparent family relationship with Ricketts to UHWI or recused himself from any discussions involving MEDITECH. As Medical Chief of Staff in charge of clinical care at the hospital for around ten years, he’s an ex-officio member of the UHWI board of management, which sometimes interrogates procurement decisions, though it’s not known if any of MEDITECH’S contracts with UHWI were ever discussed at the board level.
Ultimately, there is no hard evidence in the public domain that Bruce had or has a financial interest in MEDITECH. And according to the Observer, he denies owning the company. But with three industry insiders alleging or suggesting he’s behind the company —including MEDITECH’s former CEO —plus a genealogy search pointing to a family link, investigators probing procurement breaches at UHWI may therefore need to determine whether Bruce had a duty to declare this apparent relationship, whether he declared it, and also whether he is financially connected to MEDITECH.
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Editor’s Notes:
Editing help from ChatGPT.
The exchange rate used was J$108.74:US$1, the average of the average sell rates on the Bank of Jamaica’s website for the years 2008 to 2020 during which government contracts were awarded to MEDITECH.
*The May 26, 2025 press release confirmed to 18° North to be written by UHWI’s communications representative, Kerry-Ann Robinson, only has some of the information reported by the Observer. Robinson said she couldn’t attest to the genuineness of another release that was circulating on social media from where it appears the Observer took quotes purportedly attributed to Bruce. That release said Bruce isn’t a director in any company that compromises his duties at UHWI, while the Observer reported that it stated he wasn’t a shareholder or director in any such company. Bruce was, though, asked by 18° North via email if he disputed the quotes reported by the Observer, and he didn’t respond.
In January 2026, MEDITECH increased its authorized share capital from 100,000 to 400,000 shares.
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