Attorney cites governance concerns in case involving PM and Integrity Commission

Attorney-at-law Clive Munroe Junior says the affidavit in the court matter between Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness and the Integrity Commission highlights a departure from accountability at the political level.

The Supreme Court last Thursday rejected an application by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness to strike out portions of an affidavit filed by a senior Integrity Commission official in response to his lawsuit against the anticorruption body.

He characterised those portions of the affidavit as "an abuse of the process, scandalous, frivolous and vexatious." 

Those portions, focused, among other things, on his his sources of income, which rose from $300,000 in 1998 to almost $160 million in 2019. These sources included investments in the unregulated schemes, Olint and Cash Plus, which eventually crashed, landing their principals in legal trouble. 

Mr Munroe, reacting Sunday on Radio Jamaica's That's a Rap, said the issue should not be viewed as political.

He contends, to the contrary, that it highlights governance gaps in Jamaica.

Mr Munroe noted that it will take some time for the matters pertaining to the Prime Minister and the Integrity Commission to be resolved, taking them outside of the pending election timetable.

The Prime Minister plans to appeal the decision of the Supreme Court in relation to the applications brought by him and three connected companies against the Integrity Commission.

A trial was initially scheduled for October this year.