Editorial | IC, the law, Mr Chuck

Delroy Chuck is a long-standing and experienced legislator. Mr Chuck is also Jamaica’s minister of justice.

He therefore has a fiduciary obligation to uphold the laws of Jamaica, as well as to encourage the citizens of the country to do so. When law a is no longer relevant, or of value, to the society, Mr Chuck sits in a privileged position from which he can seek to have them changed by Parliament.

Mr Chuck also says that he is against corruption, which over 80 per cent of Jamaicans believe is rampant among public officials. He says, too, that he wants the Integrity Commission (IC) – Jamaica’s premier anti-corruption body, to which legislators and key public officials have to file annual income, assets and liabilities declarations – to succeed.

But Mr Chuck has a strange way of demonstrating his support for the IC, or his constitutional responsibility to encourage the upholding of the law. Indeed, in his latest public assault on the Integrity Commission, Delroy Chuck openly disclosed that he has advised fellow legislators to break the law by withholding information from the IC, which he deemed to be not its business.

It is not clear if when he offers such advice he has done so in his official capacity as a minister and a member of the Cabinet, which is Jamaica’s principal organ of policy, or as a private attorney.

He should say. Additionally, Prime Minister Andrew Holness must clarify the matter to ensure that there is no intermingling of Mr Chuck’s public duty and private interests.

ISSUE AT HAND

The issue at hand arises from an intervention by Mr Chuck at a meeting on Tuesday of Parliament’s Integrity Commission Oversight Committee (ICOC). He said he has been asked by members of parliament about the IC’s power to request information about the salaries of their spouses and children, presumably during the course of its investigations.

Said Mr Chuck: “Why is the Integrity Commission asking members to indicate the salaries of their spouse or sometimes of their children?

“I don’t know if this is something that is appropriate, because I have advised the relevant members, let them know your spouse is not prepared to divulge their salary.” he said, adding that by doing so the MPs are not able to share the information.

“... These are things that when we get back to the legislation we have to make it very clear what limits can be put in terms of investigations.”

There are several critical points to be made here.

First, the Integrity Commission Act, which Mr Chuck helped to pilot through Parliament, makes it an obligation that MPs and public officials in filing their declarations “include such particulars as are known to the declarant of the income, assets and liabilities of the spouse and children”.

However, this obligation does not normally apply in the case of the declarant’s adult children (18 and over) or in a situation where the child is a married minor (under 18) and was living separately and apart from the declarant during the period covered by the filing. Similarly, the income of a spouse who was living apart from the declarant during the period covered by the declaration.

The override to the exception, however, is, according to the legislation “limited to assets held by the spouse or child for, or as agent of, the declarant”.

MAKES SENSE

The requirement that the assets of children and spouses be reported makes sense. If it were otherwise, someone who has accumulated wealth beyond his income could easily park it in the name of a spouse or minor child, without any need to report the assets.

Indeed, the requirement is not entirely dissimilar to legislative efforts to prevent criminals skirting the proceeds of crime regime by having assets placed in the name of a family member or a friend.

But it is not only with respect to assets and liabilities declarations that the law gives the Integrity Commission power to demand information about the wealth of spouses and children.

When the commission’s Director of Investigations undertakes an investigation, Section 45 of the act gives him “the power to summon witnesses, compel the production of documents or any other information, and do all such things which are necessary for the purpose of conducting an investigation under this act”.

These are quite reasonable powers given that corruption, other than the petty stuff, is usually not simple or straightforward. Unearthing requires forensic probes, for which investigators need to have the appropriate tools.

Such probes might unearth inactive, 30-year-old companies, which the person who registered it didn’t remember existed. Being asked about the companies should, at worst, be a minor irritant, dealt with by a simple explanation. Not by denuding the law.

Mr Chuck has made it a habit of excoriating the IC which he once claimed “lacks integrity”, and whose requests for information from MPs he has variously described as “invasive”, “inappropriate” and “probably unlawful”.

These attacks may damage the IC. But Mr Chuck, no doubt, knows the Jamaican saying about digging two holes.