The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

OPPOSITION Leader Philip “Brave” Davis yesterday denied assertions by Deputy Prime Minister K Peter Turnquest that certain bank accounts of the previous administration’s Urban Renewal 2.0 initiative were “private” and thus inaccessible to the auditor general for review.

Mr Davis, speaking with reporters outside the House of Assembly, said Mr Turnquest was “wrong” in making his claims, further charging that Mr Turnquest’s statements were just his “nomenclature” over an account or accounts that may have been established “outside of the public service strictures”.

Mr Davis also said the accounts were established “on the authority of the financial secretary,” and insisted that there is “nothing untoward” about government agencies having their “own separate accounts to separate the way they do their business from the usual strictures of the bureaucracy of governance.”

Mr Davis also said he is not aware of any request by Auditor General Terrance Bastian to review any of Urban Renewal’s accounts while he sat as deputy prime minister.

Mr Davis was responding to claims made by Mr Turnquest in the morning session of the House of Assembly about the latter’s concerns while in opposition about whether Mr Bastian had the constitutional “right” to audit a “private account” that the Urban Renewal Commission had established.

Mr Turnquest also claimed that the Urban Renewal Foundation, a separate entity from Urban Renewal 2.0, received funds using the previous government’s banner, but still told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), of which Mr Turnquest was a member at the time, that it had “no right to investigate.”

Similar concerns were previously raised by former PAC Chairman Hubert Chipman during a controversy over Urban Renewal’s Small Homes Repair programme. In September 2015, Mr Chipman said that the PAC had found out that the Urban Renewal Foundation “sits outside Urban Renewal, even though they raise funds in the name of (the) Urban Renewal Foundation.”

At the time, Mr Chipman told reporters that Urban Renewal was operating under the direction of the Christie Cabinet and the Ministry of Works and Urban Development, but had no legal status of its own.

When questioned by The Tribune about Mr Turnquest’s claims, Mr Davis said: “He’s wrong about that. As I indicated, first of all Urban Renewal is a government agency. Government agencies cannot set up private accounts.

“…It may be an account outside of the public service, and if he’s calling it private because it was outside of the use strictures of the public service, then that’s his nomenclature for such an account.

“But it’s an account that was set up on the authority of the financial secretary, and there’s nothing untoward for agencies to have their own separate accounts to separate the way they do their business from the usual strictures of the bureaucracy of governance.”

He added: “…If he describes it as private because it is outside of the public service strictures, then that’s his nomenclature for it. What I’m saying to you is that the account was an account, it wasn’t private in the sense that it was not open for scrutiny as he (was) suggesting. That account was open for scrutiny by the auditor general.”

Meanwhile, Mr Turnquest, in his communication to Parliament, stressed the importance of the PAC having unfettered access to any report compiled by the auditor general, free of any political interference.

He referred to a situation that arose under the previous Christie administration where he said the PAC’s work was hampered due to the unavailability of an auditor general’s report in Parliament.

“…You might recall in the last term in Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee had cause to reference an auditor general’s report, and in my view…there was a ruling that the Public Accounts Committee could not access or refer to that audit report because it had not been tabled in the House,” Mr Turnquest said. “It is erroneous in my view. However, it was in the government’s authority at the time, and they did delay the presentation of that report so that it stymied the work of the Public Accounts Committee.

don’t want that to ever happen again.”