The Tribune

MISLEADING Parliament is a serious offence. The British Westminster system under which our nation operates thinks so. Opposition leader Michael Pintard clearly thinks so, judging by his response to the seemingly conflicting accounts by Finance Minister Michael Halkitis and Office of the Prime Minister communications director Latrae Rahming.

You know who else thinks misleading Parliament is a grave and serious offence – indeed, one that should be a resignation matter? Prime Minister Philip Davis. How do we know? He said so.

Remember the Oban debacle that mired the FNM’s term in office under Dr Hubert Minnis? The team at The Tribune certainly knows about that fiasco. After all, it was our reporters and editors who did the due diligence the Free National Movement government – of which Michael Pintard was a member – seemingly did not. It was The People’s Paper that revealed the true background of several Oban executives, including one who was accused of misappropriating multimillion-dollar sums in two separate lawsuits. Yet the FNM had signed a Heads of Agreement with the Grand Bahama-based project.

In Parliament, Mr Davis, then leader of the Official Opposition, singled out Dr Minnis for criticism, saying Dr Minnis had told Parliament of an intent to sign the $5.5bn oil refinery deal in the full knowledge that a deal had already been signed.

He said of Dr Minnis: “Why he misled Parliament? According to the Westminster system, to mislead Parliament is a grave and serious offence. And Minnis ought to have resigned. He never did!”

Mr Davis added: “The prime minister should know that the Westminster system is a designed model of conventions and unwritten rules. And it is best served when the government elected to manage this system serves the nation in the spirit of honour and integrity.”

That leaves us with two questions. The first is whether Parliament was misled, and the second is where the funds from the NIF have actually gone.

Let us start with the second question. The government created the fund, but now seems to be leaning on legal advice for how it conducted itself while the governance arrangements for the fund were still being completed.

While the government was talking about transferring money into the fund, it did not enlighten the public on any pressing issues with its governance arrangements.

Nor did it share that the fund’s board had never been formally convened. Yet we now know that an account bearing the NIF name was conducting transactions from July 2025 without a board.

At the very least, that points to a lack of clarity.

Despite Parliament having authorised $300m in borrowing to deposit into the NIF, Mr Halkitis says that more than that amount – $310.9m – in NIF proceeds had been spent on public infrastructure and national assets. It has not yet been explained where that extra nearly $11m came from.

Then there is the $700m question. Mr Halkitis told Parliament that $700m in “excess borrowing” was “transferred to the National Investment Fund” rather than being used to finance the government’s deficit. Mr Rahming, on the other hand, during a TV appearance, said: “The $700m derives from a report that has nothing to do with the National Investment Fund,” adding that the “$700m is an entirely separate issue”.

One of these things is not like the other. Either the $700m was transferred to the fund, or it has nothing to do with it. If Mr Halkitis is right, then Mr Rahming is not. If Mr Rahming is right, then it would appear the honourable minister may have inadvertently misled Parliament. And that, as the Prime Minister has already said, is an issue.

The bigger picture is that there should not be any discrepancies, let alone conflicting statements, when handling large sums of public money.

The NIF is not the first such fund to have faced such accusations. There have been claims in the past that funds for the Parks and Beaches Authority have been used without proper accounting. The same claims have been made about National Insurance Board funds over the years – especially during the COVID pandemic, when NIB funds were borrowed by the FNM government rather than used for their intended purpose. Yet Mr Pintard seems awfully quiet on giving the nation an accounting of such matters and whether NIB was reimbursed for those funds.

Back to the present, telling us the legal advice on how the money was managed does not fix the point that it was done in a way that contravenes its own Act.

At this stage, with two seemingly different explanations for where the funds went, we have a lack of transparency over hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ money that needs some clear, unambiguous straight talk. There is still the opportunity to carry out a full and detailed accounting of where and when this money was moved and where it ended up. After all, should the people not know where their money has gone?

That goes for the FNM too.