JAMAICA House yesterday danced around the question of whether Prime Minister Andrew Holness had instructed the Dennis Wright-chaired Firearms Licensing Authority (FLA) board to resign, as the controversy surrounding the granting of licences to shady individuals deepens.

Announcing the board’s resignation yesterday at a post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister, Information Minister Senator Ruel Reid said the board, in its letter to Security Minister Robert Montague, stated that its members were stepping aside to protect their integrity and that of the authority. He said the resignation had followed a series of debriefing sessions.

“In addition, the members felt that the current debate is distracting from the Government’s commendable crime fighting strategies,” the minister told journalists.

Reid, however, did not respond to questions about any position Holness had taken regarding the FLA board. Instead, it was Press Secretary Naomi Francis who sought to answer a battery of questions, insisting that Senator Reid had not been privy to the meeting among Holness, Montague and the chairman of the board, and was therefore not in a position to respond.

“The prime minister certainly was monitoring this matter when he was in Singapore [and] on his return he dealt with it immediately and decisively,” Francis said. She said an independent probe into the matter is not being ruled out.

Meanwhile, Reid informed journalists that in light of the resignation of the board, Montague has ordered that no permits or licences should be granted over the next seven working days. Additionally, the FLA’s CEO Shane Dalling should, over the same period, provide an update of the ministry’s assessment report on the agency and the status of the recommendations emanating from that report. Also, Dalling and his staff were instructed to give full support to the Justice Seymour Panton review panel “to ensure full transparency and the integrity of the FLA”, Reid said.

Minister Montague has asked the FLA Review Board, which is headed by the former Court of Appeal president, to undertake a review of the FLA’s processes, procedures and systems.

Deputy Chairman of the FLA Board Dennis Meadows recused himself last week as innuendos swirled about his role in the operations of the FLA. The former Jamaica Labour Party senator insisted that he was the target of a smear campaign and was confident that he would be vindicated by the investigation being carried out by the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA). The special investigative police squad was invited by Wright to probe the claims being made against Meadows, as well as any approval of licences prior to 2016 which could be considered “suspicious”.

In March, the Opposition had lambasted the Government for its appointment of former election candidates to leadership roles in the FLA, including Wright who is a former JLP candidate for Portland Eastern, and Meadows who unsuccessfully ran for the party in Trelawny Northern in last year’s general election.

The security minister summoned the board on Friday after reports surfaced that it had granted a firearm licence to an individual whose application was denied by the previous board. This was amidst news reports that other individuals with disreputable backgrounds were granted firearm licences.

The case of an applicant who did time in prison overseas on fraud charges, then deported to Jamaica, was also raised at that meeting.

The FLA, in a release issued after the meeting, disclosed that the man was denied a firearm licence on November 13, 2014, but that after he wrote to the then board appealing the decision he was subsequently granted a firearm licence on February 12, 2015. This, however, would have been granted by the previous board.

The authority further said that in May the board asked MOCA to assist with the application vetting process after it was discovered that people whose applications were on appeal were being granted firearms before those appeals were heard.

The board insisted that it followed established protocol and reviewed all cases where allegations were made against licensed holders, and where charges against them were dismissed in court. Also, the board argued that approval of a firearm licence even after an initial denial is a practice which existed prior to its tenure.