JUST over two weeks after Prime Minister Bruce Golding gave strong endorsement of the tenacity, zeal and energy with which Greg Christie approaches his job, the contractor general says he will be demitting office next year when his contract expires.

“I am gonna leave next year. I am leaving the office behind,” Christie told members of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament who were deliberating on his office’s annual report last Thursday.

Later, outside the parliament chamber at Gordon House when he was asked by this reporter about his decision, Christie — known for issuing long news releases and very detailed, voluminous reports — would only offer: “It’s a very short quote. It’s just one line. I am leaving the office next year. It’s nothing much to write about.”

Christie’s statement to the committee prompted Opposition Senator Basil Waite to express the hope that the contractor general “would reconsider”.

Christie made the announcement while responding to concerns raised by another committee member, Gregory Mair, that public hostility between his office and that of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) was hurting both institutions.

“Whereas I find it good that you interact with the Office of the DPP on certain matters, I do have a problem when that is done through the public domain and you find a titfor-tat between the Office of the Contractor General and the Office of the DPP in the public domain,” said Mair, who is also a Government parliamentarian. “It hurts our institutions, which are the pillars of our democracy. It is bad, very bad.”

Additionally, Mair said he had another bone of contention.

“The other concern I have is that the report of the OCG (seems) to be comparing the present DPP with the former DPP in rulings; it has innuendoes. And I personally, Mr Christie, don’t think it is good.”

While Mair said he had total respect for the authority of both offices, he suggested that they should use private exchanges to settle their differences instead of uttering public challenges.

“The role of the OCG ends with the report, and then it goes to the DPP, and then they take it from there. If you have concerns, I do believe you can have private exchanges, for your records, for whatever. But I do have a problem when the Office of the DPP and OCG are challenging one another in the public domain,” said Mair.

Committee member and Opposition parliamentarian Fitz Jackson said he shared some of Mair’s concerns and suggested more civil or quiet interaction between both offices.

In recent months, Christie and DPP Paula Llewellyn have exchanged verbal barbs over investigations completed by his office and sent to the DPP with recommendations for legal action.

Christie, in his annual report to Parliament last September, had expressed concern that none of over 30 referrals directed by the OCG to the DPP had “given rise, whether directly or indirectly, to a criminal charge, arrest or prosecution”.

Christie had also said that his office had not been formally advised of the Office of the DPP’s considered positions or rulings regarding some of the said matters.

Among the more notable cases are those of former Information Minister Colin Campbell whom Christie had recommended be charged for obstructing and hindering the OCG’s probe into the Trafigura affair; and television personality Susan Simes whom Christie had said should be charged in relation to her handling of shares in Simber Productions Ltd, a company for which she is a director.

The OCG had opened a probe into what was suspected to be the “irregular” awarding of contracts by the State-run Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) to Simber Productions in which former JUTC Chairman Douglas Chambers and Simes were the only shareholders.

At the end of the probe, Christie said his office found that Chambers was at all times Simber Productions’ majority shareholder and that three weeks after his murder in 2008, Simes filed an amended annual return on July 16, 2008 on behalf of Simber, which resulted in her becoming the company’s majority shareholder.

The OCG’s findings were sent to Llewellyn’s office for charges to be determined. But in September last year, Llewellyn ruled that no member of the board of the JUTC should be charged. Llewellyn also ruled that no charges could be brought against Simes, as the annual return was filed three weeks prior to Chambers’ death.

But Christie took issue with the ruling concerning Simes and wrote to Llewellyn in September, October and December calling on her to seek clarification on the date of Chambers’ death. He pointed out that the filing was in fact done three weeks after Chambers’ murder.

Llewellyn subsequently admitted in a letter to Christie in December last year that Simes had in fact filed the return three weeks after Chambers’ killing.

In response, Christie issued a statement to the press, declaring that Llewellyn “concedes” that her ruling in the matter was “factually flawed”.

But the DPP promptly shot back, saying that a further probe by her office in conjunction with the police had revealed that Simes had been the majority shareholder in the company since August 2006 as reflected by public record.

That exchange appeared to have irked Christie considerably as he spoke to it during last Thursday’s meeting. He recalled that after the DPP handed down her ruling on September 27, his office “immediately realised that she had made a grave error. We wrote to her and we told her, you have made an error”, he said.

According to Christie, it was not just the fact that the DPP implied that the OCG had got it wrong that irked him, but that she relied upon that ruling to come to a position with respect to criminal culpability in the case.

He spoke of the three letters he wrote to the DPP, and recalled that it was only on the third occasion that his correspondence was acknowledged and there was an acceptance that an error was made.

However, according to Christie, the DPP did not publicly acknowledge the error, though the ruling which, he said, impugned the credibility of his office was made public.

“When I leave the office, these folks (his staff) are gonna be there, and I have a responsibility to protect the integrity of my office and the integrity of our reports. We are not saying that we can’t make mistakes. But when things like this are imputed to us in the public domain, you cannot insist that I correct it in private,” he said in response to Mair.

Christie also appeared piqued by the DPP’s ruling in the case against Campbell whom he claimed had failed, without lawful justification or excuse, to comply with a lawful requirement of the OCG and therefore obstructed the probe into the Trafigura affair by withholding critical information.

Trafigura came to the attention of Jamaicans in 2006 when the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party revealed that the Dutch firm, which traded oil for Jamaica on the international market, had donated $31 million to an account operated by Campbell, who at the time was also general secretary of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP).

The money was transferred to the account just prior to the PNP’s annual conference that year.

Trafigura said the money was part of a commercial agreement, while the PNP maintained that it was a donation to the party.

The ensuing scandal from the transaction damaged the PNP, and Campbell resigned as the party’s general secretary and from the Cabinet. A few days later, PNP president and then prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, ordered the money sent back.

“In the ruling with respect to Mr Colin Campbell, the DPP conceded that she had mens rea, and she had actus reus. Those are the two ingredients that you must prove for criminal offences,” Christie told the committee on Thursday.

He said six reasons were given why the DPP could not proceed with criminal prosecution, four of which were based on time.

He said Jamaica does not have a statute of limitations on criminal offences and clarification was sought as three months after Llewellyn’s ruling Dutch investigators said they were headed to Jamaica regarding the same matter.

“The fifth reason she gave was that ‘the offence in question is a summary offence, one for which the maximum penalty is $5,000. That's not true. The Act says a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to both such fine and imprisonment,” Christie said.

According to the contractor general, because the fine is de minimis, the DPP was unwilling to prosecute.

Christie said the unwillingness has to be clarified for his office as the whole investigation appeared to have been a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Christie said his office has made efforts at rapprochement with the Office of the DPP in the past and cited a letter dated October 14, 2010 in which he addressed the issue of collaboration. He also told the committee that a senior deputy DPP has been working as a liaison between both offices.

Committee members floated the idea that officials from both offices could be invited to their next meeting, but Opposition Senator Mark Golding said while it could prove very entertaining, he believed it to be an unwise decision.

During Thursday’s sitting, Christie charged that in Jamaica, there appears to be one law for the rich, and one for the poor. He also defended his office, his staff and the investigations undertaken.

“We do not question the constitutional legal authority of the Office of the DPP to start and stop criminal prosecutions, as only that office is entitled to,” he said. “Our objective is to search for the truth. And, as I have said before, neither I, nor the head of any other state agency should be above enquiry. Certainly I am not above enquiry. I am enquired into every day, you see it in the media.”

Christie replaced Derrick McKoy as contractor general in November 2005.

Throughout his tenure Christie has angered politicians on both sides of the political fence, some of whom have accused him of being overzealous and over-reaching in the execution of his duties.