FORMER Dehring, Bunting and Golding (DB&G) principal Peter Bunting says that the Contractor General’s report into the 2004 transaction between the Ministry of Finance and DB&G for the sale of receivables does not support ‘defamatory allegations’ that he was the beneficiary of a ‘sweetheart deal’.

Contractor General Greg Christie, in his probe of what Finance Minister Audley Shaw had labelled ‘Sweetheart Deals’ between the People’s National Party Government and the investment bank in March 2004, concluded that the transaction was not subject to competition and described it as “irregular and highly improper”.

According to Christie, it was DB&G that approached the ministry with the idea.

However Bunting, one of DB&G’s principals at the time who is now an Opposition parliamentarian, in response to the report, said that it “…contains no finding of any sweetheart element to the transaction”.

“No nepotism. No corruption. There is nothing in the report to support the defamatory allegations made against me in 2008 behind the cloak of parliamentary privilege,” said Bunting in reference to accusations made by Shaw while he was closing the 2008/2009 Budget Debate in Parliament.

In response to Christie’s claim that the transaction was not subject to competition, Bunting argued that it was DB&G which conceptualised the potential transaction to bailout the Government which was facing a “significant challenge” in meeting its fiscal target at the time, therefore it would have been unfair for the then administration to put DB&G’s idea to tender.