The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) has turned over the report into the alleged fraud and mismanagement at its New York office to one of the country’s most senior criminal lawyers to determine whether the JTB should prosecute or seek some other way to recover money allegedly misused by staffers.

The JTB’s chairman, Dennis Morrison, declined to confirm or deny this move, but reliable sources insisted yesterday that the tourism authority’s board had approved one of three lawyers who had been short-listed by their regular attorney, Hilary Phillips, to pursue the case.

“Ms Phillips felt that the nature of the issues involved demanded that a criminal lawyer, instructed by her firm, review the report to determine how to proceed,” a Sunday Observer source said.

This development followed last November’s completion of a review, and follow-up, by the auditor-general, Adrian Strachan, of a report that was done by the JTB’s internal auditor, Colin Greenland, into the operations of the New York office.

The former tourism minister, Portia Simpson Miller, ordered the audit last August when an anonymous e-mail began to circulate, accusing senior JTB New York staff of bad management, misappropriating government resources, influence peddling and downright fraud.

At the height of the controversy, in early September, Noel Mignott, the influential deputy director of tourism, who was in charge of the New York operations, where he served for over two decades, resigned his job.

A week later, the JTB said it had fired the New York office’s advertising relations manager, Marie Deeble-Walker, saying that it had lost “confidence in her judgement as a senior officer”.

It also accepted the resignation of Yvonne Sawyers, the accountant/manager.

Greenland’s report has not been officially released, but has found its way into the public domain. A copy of the document was sent to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) by the Opposition spokesman on tourism, Ed Bartlett.

Greenland’s document raised several questions about the relationship between the JTB and a New York restaurant named Bambou owned by Mignott.

Greenland also put up a red flag around the JTB spending, of US$1.2 million over a five-year period, with a Florida-based company named Zeb Tech Designs, for the printing of brochures.

One of Mignott’s brothers, Andrew, is a principal of the company and the former tourism official said that he used the firm because it had “consistently extended credit to the JTB for long periods”.

The Greenland report also highlighted weaknesses in accounting procedures, poor record-keeping, conflict of interests in sourcing material and an almost blurring of the lines between the use of JTB resources for company and personal use.

In one case, he noted, the JTB had to hire a storeroom to keep its material while another for which it paid was stocked with furniture and other items belonging to a staff member.

According to the Sunday Observer sources, Strachan, in his review of Greenland’s report, as well as his own follow-up, came to the conclusion that there appeared to be matters demanding either restitution to the JTB or maybe even criminal proceedings against some individuals and/or firms.

“But the auditor-general determined that it was a matter for the management of the JTB to pursue, which is why his report was handed to Hilary Phillips in the first place,” said the Sunday Observer source.