On Tuesday, March 26, 2024, the Speaker of the Jamaica House of Representatives, Juliet Holness, announced that she had instructed that two reports submitted by the Auditor General should be tabled in the House.
The reports are a special audit of the Financial Services Commission and a special audit of Tax Administration Jamaica.
Earlier, on March 22, 2024, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis announced that Speaker Holness had returned the reports to Parliament. These reports had been sent on December 28, 2023, and January 29, 2024.
Despite bowing to public pressure to have the reports tabled on March 26, Mrs. Holness stated that any action she took was done with the intention of upholding the laws of Jamaica, as she has sworn to do.
She also committed to authorizing the tabling of the reports and to seeking resolution of the issues regarding the appropriate mechanism for tabling them. She plans to meet with Auditor General Pamela Munroe Ellis later in the week.
TAJ Forks Over $400M Lease for 2 Unoccupied Properties
In a baffling move, TAJ has committed to paying a staggering $400 million lease for two properties that remain unoccupied. This questionable decision raises eyebrows and demands explanation.
Tax Administration Jamaica has been extravagantly throwing away close to $400 million to lease two properties without even bothering to occupy the buildings until August last year. Can you believe it?
The audacious revelations emerged from an audit conducted by the Auditor General and were brazenly tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, after a long delay.
The Auditor General delved into Tax Administration Jamaica’s leasing arrangements following some eyebrow-raising allegations, and the findings are nothing short of scandalous.
Reports unveiled that TAJ was searching for a property to relocate its tax office to Annotto Bay St. Mary. Shockingly, it was alleged that the sitting Member of Parliament, through his private company, swiftly bought a commercial building just a few meters from the existing tax office, and then shamelessly leased it to TAJ for a whopping $700,000 per month.
But that’s not all! Despite shelling out approximately eight months’ worth of rent, the building remained unoccupied by TAJ, and renovation works were nowhere to be seen.
In the midst of these sordid allegations, the Auditor General diligently sought to assess whether there were egregious breaches in TAJ’s policies, procedures, and government guidelines. And guess what? The allegations turned out to be shockingly true.
Despite this damning discovery, the Auditor General found no evidence that the sitting MP interfered with TAJ’s procurement process or influenced the decision to lease the property. It’s a real head-scratcher, isn’t it?
Not only that, but the Auditor General also unearthed the fact that TAJ didn’t even bother to get permission from the Commissioner of Lands before diving into the lease agreement for the Annotto Bay property. Outrageous, isn’t it?
And the audacity doesn’t end there. TAJ also failed to occupy a property leased in Greenvale, Manchester, despite squandering a mind-boggling $356,802,893 over the last three years. Unbelievable!
As if that isn’t enough, as of August 2023, despite completing the proposal for renovation and furnishing in June 2019 and making the first lease payment in September 2020, the necessary retrofitting and renovation works still hadn’t even begun. Truly appalling!
To top it all off, the boorish behavior extends to TAJ’s occupancy of two other locations in the Mandeville area, costing the Government a mind-blowing $51.2 million per annum.
Can you believe it? As of August 2023, TAJ’s monthly lease payments for these properties combined were more than $11 million. What a colossal waste!
And what’s TAJ’s excuse for this flagrant mismanagement? They claim to have sought to relocate their operations in Mandeville to a 42,300-square-foot location to eliminate the challenges in managing and delivering taxpayer services caused by operating the other two places. Outrageous!
Opposition Contemplates Legal Action Over Presentation of Reports in Parliament.
Opposition Spokesperson on Finance Julian Robinson
The Parliamentary Opposition is supposedly considering resorting to the courts to resolve the issue of tabling Auditor General and Integrity Commission reports in Parliament. Following the return of two reports for tabling to the Auditor General’s Department, citing procedural errors, there are now demands for the public release of the Attorney General’s legal opinion on the tabling of reports.
Furthermore, there have been suggestions that more extensive analysis of sections 29 and 30 of the Financial Administration and Audit Act, which oversee the tabling of reports from the Auditor General, is required.
Opposition Spokesperson on Finance, Julian Robinson, stated on Beyond the Headlines on Tuesday that the Parliamentary Opposition is exploring the possibility of legal action in this matter.
It is noteworthy that issues with tabling reports from the Auditor General and the IC only arose when Dalrymple and Holness assumed their roles.