THE controversy over the premature end to the Finsac Commission of Enquiry could be resolved by weekend after the commissioners meet to discuss closure.

The Jamaica Observer understands that commissioners Worrick Bogle, chairman, and Charles Ross are to meet by weekend to discuss certain proposals on how the commission can complete its work, and produce at least an interim report on their deliberations which ended in November 2011.

Efforts to contact both commissioners failed again yesterday as they did not return calls, despite several attempts to reach them.

The Observer spoke to the secretary to the commission, Fernando dePeralto, who insisted that he could not say anything about the developments.

“I am not in a position to say anything. I guess when the commissioners meet they will say something,” said Deperalto, who confirmed that he was still the secretary to the commission. He denied that the commissioners met earlier this week, but admitted that they would meet by weekend.

The Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), under whose 2007-2011 administration the commission was established, has been demanding that the Government allocate the approximately $15 million which has been estimated as the cost to complete the process and produce a report.

“The Government must stop this naked and barefaced attempt to cover up the production of the report of the commission of enquiry into the collapse of the financial sector during the 1990s,” said Opposition spokesman on finance, Audey Shaw, during the recently completed budget debate. But Finance Minister Peter Phillips has insisted that his ministry would only pay for stenographers to type the report.

In the meantime, local businessman Milton Baker has filed a claim in the Supreme Court seeking a judicial review for a report to be produced by the commissioners.

Baker — the husband of Yola Grey Baker, current president of the Association of Finsac’d Entrepreneurs (AFE) that represents the debtors — claims to have lost some $150 million after his properties were foreclosed during the meltdown.

Attorney for Baker, Kent Gammon, has said that the case will come up in court on June 25. He is hoping that the court will agree with Baker that he has a right to have a report issued by the commission, having participated in the enquiry.

There have been suggestions that the commissioners may volunteer to complete the report, but the commissioners have told the Observer in the past that the report was slated to be written by their attorney at the enquiry, former high court judge, Justice Henderson Downer, who is no longer employed to the commission.

The commission has had no staff since it closed down operations in early 2012, a couple months after completing the enquiry in November 2011, except for the commissioners and Deperalto.

The Finsac Enquiry was set up in 2009 to uncover the circumstances which led to the collapse of local financial institutions in the 1990s, which is said to have cost Jamaica approximately 40 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). FINSAC (the Financial Sector Adjustment Company), which was set up by Government to handle the issues, eventually became the metaphor for the crisis.