Durrant Pate/Contributor

Three councillors from the St Catherine Municipal Corporation are to be charged with breaching Section 43(1) (a) of the Integrity Commission Act (ICA) by their failure to file statutory declarations.

They are Dwight Burke and Vanrick Preddie of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) and Donovan Guy of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

The Integrity Commission (IC), through Roneiph Lawrence, acting director of corruption prosecutions,
ruled that the three be criminally charged for their failure to file statutory declarations.

The ruling against all three stems from a probe carried out individually by the IC director of investigations, Kevon Stephenson, into the men’s failure to file their statutory declaration to the commission, which was referred to Lawrence for a ruling.

The IC has submitted the individual investigative report along with Lawrence’s ruling to Parliament for tabling, which was done on Tuesday (June 10) in the House of Representatives.

In the case of Burke, he was cited for failing to file a statutory declaration with the IC for the year 2022.

He was given an opportunity to discharge his liability by way of paying a fixed penalty and submitting the required statutory declaration.

“Notwithstanding, Burke’s compliance was partial, that is, he only submitted the required statutory declaration but failed to pay the fixed penalty,” the IC director of investigations reported.

Preddie, who was legally obligated to file statutory declarations with the IC for the years 2019, 2021 and 2022, reportedly failed to submit the documents by the due date and provided no reasonable cause for
his failure to do so.

The IC reports that Preddie was given an opportunity to discharge liability by paying the fixed penalty and submitting the required statutory declarations, to which he only complied with the latter.

Meanwhile, Guy allegedly failed to submit the requisite statutory declarations to the IC by the due date and was said to have failed to provide a reasonable cause for not filing on time.

In addition, the IC states that Guy was given an opportunity to discharge liability by paying the fixed penalty and submitting the outstanding statutory declarations.

However, as Guy only complied with the latter obligation, he failed to discharge his liability consistent with Section 43(3) of the ICA.