Dispute over Reid’s $23M PAYOUT

An agreement is in place for the Government to reimburse Jamaica College’s (JC) portion of the $23.3-million severance payment to Ruel Reid to secure his resignation as principal, the attorney for the school board has claimed.

This assertion by Lance Hylton, who served as the attorney for the school board during the settlement talks with Reid, was included in a leaked email obtained by The Sunday Gleaner and repeated during an interview last week.

“In the end, the [JC] Trust paid the money on condition that the ministry would reimburse it,” Hylton wrote in the June 2022 email that was copied to about 40 old boys, including influential current and past sector leaders.

It appears to contradict public statements by the education ministry last year that only $16.1 million of the full payment was borne by taxpayers. In November 2021, it was reported that the $23.3 million settlement agreement for Reid to demit office as JC principal on November 20 that year would be split between the Ministry of Education ($16.1 million) and the JC Trust ($7.2 million).

But Education Minister Fayval Williams is dismissing the conflicting assertion by Hylton, who is also vice-chairman of the JC board.

“That’s not accurate,” she said twice when asked by The Sunday Gleaner on Thursday to respond to Hylton’s claim that her ministry had given an undertaking to refund JC the $7.2 million, which would mean that taxpayers would cover the full cost of Reid’s severance package.

Hylton, however, doubled down on his assertion during an interview on Thursday, disclosing that he personally delivered the $23.3 million payment to Reid’s attorney “and the ministry is to pay back JC”.

“Ok, well I can only tell you …” he said, without completing the statement when told of Williams’ comments.

ADVANCE FOR REIMBURSEMENT

Reid, the former education minister who was sacked by Prime Minister Andrew Holness before he was arrested on fraud-related charges involving his ministry, confirmed receiving the payment, but refused to comment on Hylton’s claim.

“The payment has been made, but I believe that some paperwork has to be sorted out between JC and the ministry,” Reid told The Sunday Gleaner on Thursday.

“I am not at liberty to comment any further on those matters,” he added when asked if he was referring to the reimbursement to JC.

When contacted, one of the JC old boys copied on the email said his clear understanding was that the JC Trust would fork out more than $7 million towards Reid’s severance payment, as “an advance for the Ministry of Education to reimburse”.

“At the time, there was a whole heap of vexation and anger about the Trust money being used for that purpose,” he recounted.

But the JC old boy said he later learnt that the money would not come directly from the Trust funds, but from contributions that were collected.

“And that cooled people down,” he disclosed.

Reid, along with his wife Sharen; daughter, Sharelle; former Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) President Professor Fritz Pinnock; and Jamaica Labour Party Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence, are awaiting trial on fraud-related charges.

They are accused of diverting nearly $50 million from CMU to their personal use through a number of schemes, including one that mirrored the official Career Advancement Programme Youth Employment Solution.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com