Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter
Audley Shaw, Opposition Spokesman on Finance, addresses Parliament during the Budget Debate on Tuesday. - IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
OPPOSITION SPOKESMAN on Finance, Audley Shaw says the Opposition was willing to take the Government to court to get information on comfort letters, which he claims were issued to public entities by the Ministry of Finance and Planning.
Mr. Shaw made the threat on Tuesday during his Budget Debate presentation in the House of Representatives. He did so after reading a letter addressed to him by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, which stated that there was no list of comfort letters.
"Something is wrong and you have a duty to clear this up," Shaw said.
He further contended that the Finance Minister's claims that letters of comforts did not exist could not be right as, at a previous sitting of the House, the Minister of Finance had given the undertaking that he would provide the documents.
WILL NOT REST
"We will not rest until we are told. minister, we want to be told the whole truth, we want the whole truth and nothing but the truth," Shaw demanded.
He insisted: "Whatever it takes, if we have to file further questions in Parliament, we will do it. If we have to invoke the Freedom of Information Act, we will do it and the Opposition is prepared to go to court if necessary to get the information on the comfort letters."
Letters of comfort and letters of undertaking first came to the attention of the public last month when representatives of the Ministry of Finance and Planning admitted at a special sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament that the ministry had been in breach of the Financial Adminis-tration and Audit Act (FAA) by issuing letters of undertaking to government entities without prior parliamentary approval.
The Finance Ministry representatives also divulged that since 2001, letters of guarantees worth $19.6 billion had been offered by 13 government entities to commercial banks to cover loans to the government entities.
