Edmond Campbell, Senior News Coordinator

More than two months after Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller instructed party officials to send back the $31 million 'donation' from Trafigura Beheer, the money is yet to be returned to the Dutch oil trader.

The Trafigura Beheer scandal, which was declared history by Information Minister Donald Buchanan at a post-Cabinet press conference at Jamaica House in October, continues to present a challenge to the hierarchy of the governing People's National Party (PNP).

Buchanan told The Gleaner yesterday that officers of the party had assured him that the money would soon be returned.

Process almost complete

According to him, "The officers with responsibility for the return of these funds have assured me that the process is almost complete and very soon they will indicate to me that those funds have been returned."

However, it is not the first time that commitments were made by party officials that the funds would be returned.

Opposition Leader Bruce Golding unveiled the Trafigura scandal last year during a press conference in the Opposition's offices in Parliament after storming out of the House during a debate to censure Opposition Member of Parliament Karl Samuda for "deliberately misleading" his parliamentary colleagues.

Betrayed public trust

Golding charged that the current administration had betrayed the public trust in its dealings with the Dutch oil trading company and as such had no moral authority to govern.

Trafigura Beheer had given a 'donation' amounting to $31 million to the PNP through CCOC Associates, an account linked to the party's former general secretary and Information Minister Colin Campbell.

Campbell was the single casualty of the Trafigura affair after he tendered his resignation as Information and Development Minister.

But the Trafigura controversy had also contributed to Prime Minister Simpson Miller's waning popularity and the decline of her party's political stocks, according to a Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson poll late last year.

Mr. Golding reported at the Jamaica Labour Party's annual conference in November last year that the Dutch Government had started an investigation into the donation from Trafigura.

However, to date, there has been no further details on the probe.