I just wanted the PNP to come clean on Trafigura, says Golding

The man who blew the whistle on the Trafigura scandal believes it could have been put to rest very early had the People’s National Party (PNP) come “clean” about a controversial $31-million payment from Dutch firm Trafigura Beheer in 2006.

The PNP has been stained by the so-called Trafigura scandal since then Opposition Leader Bruce Golding raised questions about the payment in Parliament.

“All that I sought to do at that time, you know, was to raise serious questions about the probity of the matter,” Golding told The Sunday Gleaner during an interview on Friday.

But the PNP has accused Golding of misleading the Parliament and the nation about much of the information he made publicly about the payment.

At the time, Trafigura Beheer had an oil-lifting contract with the Jamaican Government, formed at the time by the Portia Simpson Miller-led PNP, which had expired the previous year.

But the firm continued to lift oil for Jamaica in 2006 under an interim arrangement that was in place although the then National Contracts Commission had recommended that the new contract be awarded to Glencore Energy UK Limited, the company that emerged as the winning bidder.

“It raises serious questions about whether there was a quid pro quo,” the former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader insisted.

Four PNP functionaries – former Chairman Robert Pickersgill, former General Secretary Colin Campbell, Member of Parliament Phillip Paulwell and businessman Norton Hinds – answered over 200 questions about the payment over four days of hearings in the Jamaican Supreme Court last week.

Simpson Miller, 76, who was PNP president and prime minister at the time, was excused from giving answers on medical grounds.

The court hearing came 15 years after the questions were first posed by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Jamaica’s designated Central Authority, on behalf of Dutch investigators who were probing whether the payment of 466,000 euros broke any criminal laws in the Netherlands.

“The matter could have gone to bed from the very outset if the PNP had just come clean...if the PNP had just said this is a political donation and we set up this vehicle because Trafigura had said we can’t make donations to political parties,” said Golding.

“The problem is that, if they had done that they would have left Trafigura out in the cold, which they have now done anyway,” he charged, referring to criminal charges filed against the firm.

Trafigura is now on trial in the Netherlands for allegedly bribing public officials there as well as in Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom, Ronald Steen, a district attorney in Rotterdam, told this newspaper last week.

Deborah Martin, the attorney who represented Paulwell, indicated last Thursday that the five PNP functionaries “had no difficulty” answering the questions from the outset.

But she explained that fundamental concerns about the process were what led to the legal challenges in the Full Court, the Court of Appeal and Jamaica’s final appellate court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council based in the United Kingdom.

A central issue, she said, was that Jamaican citizens were being compelled, by court order, to give witness statements in public at the investigatory stage and whether that amounted to a breach of their constitutional rights.

“So, we spent a lot of time trying to get an understanding as to what would be the best process in Jamaica in circumstances where we have no regulations,” said Martin, underscoring a major flaw with the Mutual Assistance Criminal Matters Act.

Those arguments were, however, shot down by the Full Court, the Appeal Court and the Privy Council.

“The court was entitled to consider the public importance of, and interest in, the investigation, together with the public profile of the witnesses, were relevant to the question whether the proceedings should take place in public,” the Privy Council said, affirming the judgment of the Jamaica Appeal Court.

livern@barrett@gleanerjm.com