The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

“ONE or two” parliamentarians have requested extra time to disclose their assets and liabilities, according to chairman of the Public Disclosure Commission Bishop Victor Cooper yesterday.

The deadline for officials to file their financial disclosures is tomorrow, March 1.

Yesterday, Bishop Cooper was contacted by The Tribune to see how many parliamentarians had made the filings ahead of the deadline. He was unable to say and only told this newspaper that it was “a lot”.

 “I can say this because I just spoke with my office recently and I can report that a lot of people have filed and are trying to stay on time with their filing and so that’s an excellent sign for us,” he said.

 “I have not gotten any major reports about extensions. There may be one or two or thereabout but generally, people are filing and happily, they are doing it in time prior to the deadline.”

 Bishop Cooper said he was going to the office later this week to find out how many had filed their financial disclosures.

 “The process is that this is a very taxing thing for members of Parliament and senior government officials, so they have to make sure that the documents that they are sending us have the necessary verifications of what they’re saying because if it’s not completed, we have got to send it back out to them and tell them ‘look, these documents are not accompanied by the necessary verified documents’ so it’s a very tax process,” he added.

 “So, I’ll be able to speak to you more specifically once I go into the office, but I have gotten reports that generally, a number of them are sending in and I’m very pleased with that.”

 Parliamentarians and senators, along with senior public officers, are required to submit their disclosures to the PDC by March each year.

 The Public Disclosure Act empowers only two people to act on delinquent filings: the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

 Either of them can publish the information through a communication in the House of Assembly or cause for it to be laid in the Senate. Either can authorise that the information be presented to the attorney general or commissioner of police so those who failed to disclose could face a penalty.

 The penalty for not disclosing is a $10,000 fine and/or up to two years in prison.

 Last year, Bishop Cooper told a local daily that some first-time MPs missed the deadline because they were not aware that there was a legal requirement for them to file financial disclosures under the Public Disclosures Act.

 Press secretary Clint Watson later blamed it as a “simple oversight”.