No ‘second bite of the cherry’ - Dirk Harrison fires back at Integrity bosses as resort land deal spat deepens
Published:Friday | May 3, 2019 | 12:16 AMRomario Scott/Gleaner Writer
The brawl over the sale of St Ann hotel and beach lands below market value by the state-owned Urban Development Corporation (UDC) has intensified, as former Contractor General Dirk Harrison is strongly insisting that the commissioners of the Integrity Commission were wrong to allow the comments of politicians to be presented with the report tabled in Parliament earlier this week.
Harrison’s explosive report stated that the UDC was unable to negotiate freely and from a position of strength in the sale of Rooms on the Beach to Puerto Caribe Properties Limited because of the alleged meddling of government minister Daryl Vaz and others.
Subsequent to the tabling, Harrison faced harsh criticism from the minister, having been told to “put up or shut up” as his conclusions, according to Vaz, were baseless and inaccurate.
The former contractor general is now the director of prosecutions at the Integrity Commission.
The controversy, however, deepened when Harrison’s superiors raised doubts about the credibility of the report in a statement issued on April 30.
“After a detailed review, the commission agreed unanimously that the validity to certain substantive conclusions was doubtful and could be open to serious questioning if read by an objective person,” the commission, headed by retired high court Justice Karl Harrison, said.
Karl Harrison is not related to Dirk Harrison.
The Integrity Commission said the former contractor general objected to formal written responses from government officials to the findings of his report about the Rooms on the Beach sale being tabled in Parliament.
The commission said that despite Dirk Harrison’s objection, it elected to submit the responses from the government officials to Parliament, along with his report, in the spirit of fairness and transparency.
But Harrison said the commissioners deviated from the law in an 11-point response concerning the issue.
“The law does not permit, much less require, any more than providing the substance of the report to the person(s) whom the report reflects adversely upon and that is simply to provide an accurate summary and nothing more,” the attorney-at-law argued in his response.
Dirk Harrison also told his bosses that what they were, in effect, doing was seeking to reopen an investigation that had been completed.
“The commissioners, by inviting comments and seeking to table them, are giving them a second bite of the cherry. The honourable prime minister, Senator (Ransford) Braham, and the honourable minister were sent requisitions, and Mr Vaz was summoned and [he] appeared. All things said as to their role was put to them on those occasions,” Harrison further explained to The Gleaner yesterday as he defended his stance.
Harrison’s report described the UDC’s sale of Rooms on the Beach for approximately US$6 million less than the maximum valuation price as “an insult to the people of Jamaica”.