McLean to take ministry to court
Published:Friday | August 11, 2023 | 12:08 AM
Dr Grace McLean, the interdicted former acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, has instructed her attorney, Peter Champagnie, KC, to take action against the ministry when courts sittings are resumed in September.
McLean has been on interdiction by the ministry for more than a year and a half in the wake of an investigation launched by the Financial Investigations Division and the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency. The agencies are probing some $124 million in unaccounted-for payouts to the Cecil Cornwall-chaired Joint Committee on Tertiary Education (JCTE).
Champagnie told The Gleaner on Thursday that he had written to the education ministry indicating that the interdiction was unjust, but to date, he had not received a response.
“As would be expected with anybody in that position, there is a lot of anxiety and I wish for there to be closure,” he added, signalling that his client wanted a cessation of the interdiction.
On January 19, 2022, McLean received a letter from the ministry advising of her interdiction until Financial Secretary Darlene Morrison makes a determination if she should be surcharged for the $124 million.
At the time of her interdiction, McLean had insisted that the surcharge proceedings instituted against her were unwarranted.
Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis had made the surcharge recommendation following her audit of the funds paid over to the JCTE, which refused to submit documents after claiming it was a private entity.
A similar action was also recommended against Dean-Roy Bernard, the permanent secretary McLean replaced when he was reassigned to the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service as director general.
Bernard is now supernumerary permanent secretary in the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport. His latest reassignment came in June this year in keeping with a Supreme Court decision in March 2023.
The funds under probe were paid to the JCTE over a 32-month period up to June 2020.
Cornwall claimed that his JCTE Limited was a private entity, but the auditor general contended that she was only interested in funds transferred to the government entity with a similar name.
Monroe Ellis argued that if Cornwall’s position is accepted, the matter must be probed to determine whether a fraud has been committed by a private institution using a tax registration number for a government institution to receive money.
The Government’s JCTE was established in 1991, and Cornwall registered his JCTE Limited in February 2019.
The body was set up as an advisory committee comprising tertiary-education institutions.
According to responses submitted by the ministry to the auditor general, the establishment of the JCTE as an advisory body under the Education Act was not fully completed.
In March this year, McLean’s home was one of several premises targeted in a series of coordinated operations by law enforcement authorities. The search and seizure operations were related to alleged financial impropriety involving the Ministry of Education and the JCTE.
The operations were conducted at nine locations, five in Kingston and St Andrew, three in St James and one in Westmoreland. Law enforcement sources at the time disclosed that several devices and documents linked to the probe were seized. No arrests were made.