FORMER Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies has scolded the Government for not providing a report from the Finsac Commission of Enquiry, arguing that it represents “a major embarrassment for the Administration” and is “a travesty after the passage of 15 years and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds”.

Davies, who was minister at the time of the financial sector crash in the 1990s, said in a letter to the Jamaica Observer that the decision announced by current Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke was “inconsistent with good governance and further undermines public trust and confidence in the nation’s democratic governance processes”.

Clarke, while opening the 2024/25 Budget Debate in March, had announced that all the information gathered by the Finsac Commission during its examination of the circumstances which led to the financial meltdown is to be published on a specially curated website and made available to the public in perpetuity.

He also said that the finance ministry is to provide grants for academic research to be published, as well as the creation of documentaries on the financial sector collapse “from which future generations can learn”.

Clarke did not give a date for the publication of the Finsac Commission archives; however, he said that the perspectives on what he termed “a defining period of the Jamaican story” need to be made available to the public as soon as is practicably possible.

“We owe it to the victims of that era, to ourselves, and to future generations, to do our best to record for posterity the evidence gathered from the commission, make it publicly available, and have it inspire the production of research reports and cultural creative output,” Clarke said.

Finsac (Financial Sector Adjustment Company) Limited was established by the Government in January 1997 to restore stability after the collapse of several major financial institutions due largely to various factors, including high bank interest rates promulgated by the then Government; excessive spending by large, small and medium-sized businesses; and a meteoric rise in bad loans at financial institutions.

It is still unclear how much the economy lost during the period; however, experts have put it at approximately $120 billion and about 40 per cent of GDP.

Fifteen years ago the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government appointed a commission of enquiry into what caused the financial sector crisis and the surrounding circumstances.

The expected report from the appointed commissioners kept missing deadlines and was never completed, despite considerable financial outlay by the Government.

Dr Davies, in his letter, said Dr Clarke “has not explained the expenditure areas for using public funds, which is unacceptable on several levels. The arbitrary decision is inconsistent with good governance and further undermines public trust and confidence in the nation’s democratic governance processes. Also, the exceedingly high level of publicity the commission of enquiry generated, even before the first sitting, prejudiced the public’s view of the results, with conclusions drawn regarding where the blame should be placed. Therefore, the public’s interest in Finsac is multifaceted; the public deserves to know the commission’s findings”.

Davies also said that “any objective assessment would have indicated severe flaws in the process, leading to the establishment of the commission, thus dooming the proceedings from the start. All pretences of objectivity were ignored, and the authorities demonstrated clear bias throughout”.

He said that at the time the commission was established the then finance minister “was himself a delinquent debtor of one of the intervened institutions”.

“He subsequently asserted that he had reached a compromise settlement with his creditors. However, in the spirit of transparency, he must publish details of the final settlement. Did his creditors mistreat him?” Davies asked.

“Other prominent members of the then Government were involved in matters that came before Finsac, with one being a principal of a failed institution, the creditors of which had to be rescued by the Government of Jamaica through the much-maligned Finsac,” Davies said.

He also charged that “the first person appointed to head the commission, a senior member of the judiciary, turned out to be a delinquent debtor of one of the institutions and was assessed to be unfit to continue as chairman by the courts. Nonetheless, members of the governing party continued to make prejudicial pronouncements on the matter, even with no supporting evidence”.

Additionally, Davies said that for the commission’s initial sittings, Finsac was not permitted to engage legal representation, leading to various widely publicised, unsubstantiated allegations of bias on the part of the institution’s management that went unchallenged.

“Regarding my involvement with the commission, I appeared before the tribunal on three occasions. During these appearances the chairman allowed various political activists to cross-examine me, making spurious allegations, suggesting bias on the part of the management of Finsac, and political interference in decision-making. The chairman did not attempt to ascertain the validity of the assertions that formed the basis of their questions.

“In addition to my appearances in person, I submitted written depositions on specific issues at the commissioners’ request. The commission’s final report ought to include this crucial and clarifying information,” Davies said.

“There can be no question that the failure to produce a report represents more than an embarrassment for the Administration after more than a decade and millions of dollars expended on politicising a crucial matter deserving of thoughtful interrogation,” he added, then asked, “Can the public imagine what this Administration’s reaction would have been had this débâcle taken place with the [current] Opposition in Government? Could the commissioners have laboured for so many years and produced nothing consequential, or is it that their findings, based on the only credible testimonies, reject the unsubstantiated and malicious accusations consistently trumpeted by the Administration’s ‘attack dogs’?”

The Government, he said, “is duty-bound to provide a response so that citizens may determine whether the accusations are true or false and if the hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds were well-spent or wasted”.

While Davies called no names in his letter, his reference to “a senior member of the judiciary” was apparently to retired Justice Boyd Carey whose chairmanship of the commission he and former Financial Secretary Shirley Tyndall had opposed on several grounds, including perceived bias.

Davies and Tyndall had argued before a judicial review panel that the retired judge had a loan with Citizens Bank that had to be taken over by Finsac after the bank failed. The claimants also argued for the scrapping of the inquiry.

However Carey’s attorney, Dr Lloyd Barnett, in presenting his defence to the panel in August 2010, refuted claims that his client was a debtor to Finsac.

Barnett said that Justice Carey was not in the class of people who were delinquent debtors and whose debts in failed institutions were transferred to Finsac or any of it entities.

The retired high court judge had said in an affidavit filed in the case that he had an overdraft with the bank, and not a debt.

The Judicial Review Court, in its ruling, disqualified Carey as chairman of the Finsac enquiry. At the same time the court refused to declare the enquiry null and void.

Carey died in May 2015.