The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL 

Tribune Staff Reporter 

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

PUBLIC Disclosure Commission chairman Bishop Victor Cooper wrongly claimed the commission cannot gazette information about the financial declarations parliamentarians must make.

In its latest investment climate report on The Bahamas, the United States noted that the Public Disclosure Commission has failed for the past 13 years to meet its legal obligation to gazette reports concerning legislators’ declaration of assets, income and liabilities.

The US noted that the most recently gazetted report was from December 2011, and “it contained information on disclosures only up to 2008”.

Bishop Cooper said he did not read the US report, adding: “We complete our reports. We aren’t empowered to put them in a gazette. That is something the prime minister, you know, the opposition they are responsible for that.”

“Whatever we do, we gotta go through the Office of the Prime Minister, and once that is approved, we will go forward.”

In fact, Section 6(2) of the Public Disclosure Act says that after the commission has examined parliamentarians’ declarations, “it shall publish a summary of that declaration in the Gazette in the form prescribed by Form B in the Second Schedule”.

That form requests information about a declarant’s spouse, children, particulars of bonds, stocks, shares and similar investments that officials may hold and their annual income.

The law does not empower the commission to disclose who has failed to declare. The commission can report this to the prime minister and the leader of the opposition,

either of whom can have the information disclosed in the House of Assembly or the Senate or be sent to the attorney general or commissioner of police for further action.

Parliamentarians and senior public officials must submit their financial declarations to the commission by March 1. Keishla Adderley, the press secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, said earlier this year that the commission extended the deadline to March 31.

In April, Bishop Cooper said 90 per cent of parliamentarians had filed by March 1. He said many senators and senior civil servants failed to declare last year.

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

Bishop Cooper said he “feverishly” hopes to see changes in the commission’s operations.

“What is happening now, we have made a report, we’ve made some request to work on the commission as it is, and so we have to wait again for the approval, and it’s a parliamentary thing, you know, they have to draft the right paper, and that has to go through Parliament for their approval, and then some things will happen,” he said.