Contractor General Dirk Harrison yesterday expressed regret that it took the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) eight months to be convinced that the public sector procurement regulations apply to the purchase of all goods, works, and services, irrespective of the value.
Harrison was responding to DPP Paula Llewelyn’s reversal of her decision that there was nothing criminal for which former Lucea mayor Shernett Haughton could be charged in relation to the issuing of contracts to relatives and friends.
Haughton will now be the subject of a criminal investigation.
Llewellyn had originally dismissal Harrison’s interpretation of the public procurement regulations, and his call for criminal proceedings against Haughton.
But yesterday Llewellyn conceded that she was wrong in dismissing the contractor general’s interpretation of the regulations, based on his report on the charges of nepotism and criminality against Haughton, who has resigned as mayor but remains as the People’s National Party councillor for the Green Island Division of the Hanover Parish Council.
“While the contractor general welcomes this change of stance, albeit late in the day, his regret is that it took the institution of a court action, subsequent consultation with a Queen’s Counsel and the acting chief parliamentary counsel after the case was well underway and the passage of eight months, for the DPP to properly advise herself that in essence, the regulations which govern public sector procurement are applicable to all procurement of goods, works, services irrespective of the value, and that Circular No. 16 does not exclude contracts below $500,000 from criminal liability,” Harrison said in a statement.
In a report tabled in the House of Representatives on March 24, Harrison had recommended that Haughton relinquish her position as councillor, as well, on the basis of her unethical behaviour.
The report accused her of nepotism and criminal offences in the Hanover Parish Council’s award of 22 contracts, with a cumulative value of $3.7 million, to her relatives and affiliates.
In her response in April, Llewellyn dismissed Harrison’s recommendation that Haughton’s actions constituted criminal offences, claiming that none of the contracts went over the $500,000 threshold.
Harrison noted that Llewellyn also made public statements in several newspaper articles suggesting that he had “very little chance of succeeding” in convincing her through the court, after he took the matter to court.
“We will be ready to meet any and every possible argument that the OCG will posit…,” he said the DPP responded in one article to his decision to take the matter to court.
But yesterday, Llewellyn, in conceding that she was wrong, commented that she is “only human”.
“I have indicated that, based on the report (from the contractor general) there is a prima facie case in respect of a breach of the regulations. The police now have to go and collect the statements from the witnesses,” she said.
Yesterday, Harrison said that DPP would also have to meet the cost of the court’s intervention.