THE National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), which has kept mostly quiet in the midst of the furore over the contentious Sandals Whitehouse Hotel project, yesterday dropped its own bombshell.

NIBJ, partner with combatants Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and Gorstew, Sandals’ holding company on the hotel project, said Anthony Hylton had in fact sent a summary of his findings on the Whitehouse project to then Prime Minister P J Patterson.

The revelation at yesterday’s Public Accounts Committee session in Parliament triggered sharp exchanges between Government and Opposition members, and a call from the Opposition that the censure motion against Karl Samuda be dropped.

There were also veiled suggestions that Patterson could be called before the PAC.

Audley Shaw, Opposition member, used the report as the basis of questions to NIBJ assistant general manager, Denise Arana, who confirmed an NIBJ report saying the summarised findings of an enquiry led by Hylton, chairman of the Port Authority of Jamaica, into the US$43- million cost overrun on the hotel project, had in fact been forwarded to Patterson.

The NIBJ report quoted Arana as saying that she had called Hylton’s office to check about his report on the Whitehouse project and was told that the summarised findings had been sent to the prime minister.

But under questioning from Opposition members yesterday, Arana claimed not to be able to recall the officer with whom she had spoken nor the date when she called. The NIBJ never received a copy of the final facilitator’s report, she added.

In a July letter to the UDC, Hylton, who had been appointed by Patterson to lead the enquiry in 2005, denied submitting a report on the project overruns, contradicting claims by Samuda, the Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and foreign trade, that such a report had been issued.

Samuda, who faced a censure motion for his claims, also said the Hylton report was studied by the Cabinet.

But Government members yesterday insisted that Hylton had already told parliament in a statement that no report had been done. Furthermore, they said both the former prime minister and the present prime minister had said they did not receive any such final report from Hylton.

Government member K D Knight who took umbrage at the Opposition’s insistence that the matter be revisited, said he was not in support of any effort which would make the former prime minister or Hylton look like a ‘fabricator’.

They said Hylton had not prepared a final report following his enquiry as he had been sidelined by the forensic audit report and the contractor-general’s own investigation into the cost overruns on the project.

Against suggestions that senior Government officials had been made to appear before the PAC, which the Government side read as a hint that Patterson could be called, Knight told the meeting that the former prime minister could not be made to face the PAC, unless it was a decision he, Patterson, chose to make.

In the heated cross talk which ensued, Opposition member Delroy Chuck said “there was no escape” and the censure motion against Samuda should be thrown out on the basis of the statement by Arana.

Meantime, representatives of Gorstew will appear before the PAC next Tuesday.