Editorial | Dennis Gordon must recuse himself from PAC

It would always have been untenable. But having personally, inserted himself and his company into the debate over the auditor general’s findings at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), Dennis Gordon has made it explicit: he can’t participate in the Public Account Committee’s (PAC) review of the audit.

If Mr Gordon had intended to be part of those meetings, both the committee’s chairman, Julian Robinson, and their party’s president, Mark Golding, must make it clear to him that his presence, except as a witness, would be unwelcome and unhelpful, breaching the accepted rules of fair play and justice: Nemo judex in causa – no one should be a judge in their own cause.

In other words, Mr Gordon, without having been told should, and should already have announced, that he will recuse himself from all PAC sessions dealing with the UHWI report.

At the same time, Mr Robinson should find the redacted names of all the companies for whom the auditor general said the (UHWI) improperly used its tax-exempt status for them to bypass duties on imports. If indeed Mr Gordon’s company benefited, it shouldn’t be the only one publicly named and shamed, and called to account.

And in reviewing the UHWI matter the PAC should use the opportunity to ask Jamaica Customs if it has acted, or intends to act, on the Integrity Commission’s (IC’s) recommendation that it clawback from former House Speaker, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, the duty concessions she received on a imported vehicle that was indirectly passed on to a family member.

Mr Gordon is a long-standing member of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP). Having won the East Central St Andrew parliamentary constituency for his party in last September’s general election, he was assigned a seat on the PAC.

HELD CONTRACTS

Mr Gordon is also a businessman, whose health services and cleaning company, JACDEN, has, for several years, held contracts with healthcare institutions, including UHWI.

In an audit report released in January that unearthed widespread breaches of government procurement rules at the UHWI, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis, revealed a number of instances in which the hospital – a teaching institution of the University of the West Indies – leveraged its privileged status to allow at least four companies to dodge tariffs. That hurt the national coffers.

The auditor general didn’t name the companies, identifying them only as “private companies’ and listing them in sequential numbers.

In the case of “Private Company 2”, the audit found that UHWI “misused” its tax-exempt status to import dialysis machines and office furniture for the company. Taxpayers forfeited J$10.1 million in duties.

Nationwide Radio, named JACDEN as the company involved in that incident, saying that it had seen relevant documents. It is not clear whether the news outlet knew the other companies.

Mr Gordon, JACDEN’s executive chairman, caused his firm to issue a statement in which it neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the incident, but stressed that the auditor general didn’t conclude JACDEN was the cause of any of the issues found at UHWI.

Said the JACDEN statement: “the report identifies administrative and systemic failures within UHWI’s internal and customs-related processes and does not conclude that JACDEN caused or directed those failures.

“Any suggestion that the auditor general’s report makes adverse findings against JACDEN represents an incorrect interpretation and is not supported by the contents of the report.”

HARD TO AVOID

Fair enough, on two counts; one, insofar that JACDEN was not named in the published report; and second, on a narrow reading of the document if JACDEN’s statement was an implicit admission it was “Private Company 2”.

It is hard to avoid an adverse implication for both parties if the auditor general said that the one “misused” its privileged status for the benefit of the other. Well, unless the second entity pleaded that it was in total ignorance of the actions of the first.

On this matter, this newspaper expects the PAC to be robust in its hearings on the UHWI affair, giving no quarter to anyone involved, including Mr Gordon – if he is.

As Mr Golding said, the chips must be allowed to fall where they will. The same principle should apply to the Dalrymple-Philibert matter if Jamaica Customs, like the Integrity Commission, concluded that she broke the rules.