The Senate yesterday gave approval for the required ministerial order to be made permitting the Government to authorise Dutch investigators to conduct local inquiries in relation to the controversial Trafigura affair.

This follows a similar approval by the House of Representatives and should shortly result in the Dutch investigators arriving in Jamaica with the full agreement of the Government.

The Government of the Netherlands is investigating whether the Dutch oil trading firm, Trafigura, bribed Jamaican officials last year when it made a J$31 million donation to the then governing People's National Party (PNP).

The PNP government rejected a request earlier this year for Dutch investigators to travel to Jamaica and question officials of the party regarding their roles in the affair.

Renewed request

After the Government changed hands on September 3, the request was renewed and the new Bruce Golding administration indicated its intention to cooperate with the Dutch, in keeping with the country's obligations under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, 2001.

The Government, with its natural majority, inevitably secured passage of the motion, as it did previously in the House of Representatives. Interestingly, however, all opposition members present abstained rather than oppose the motion. Explaining his rationale for abstaining, Opposition member KD Knight said he was basing this on the premise that he could not oppose any genuine effort to prosecute anyone who is guilty of a criminal offence targeted under the Convention.

Senator Knight (who was the minister who piloted the relevant local legislation consequent on the ratification of the treaty) raised serious concerns however about the motives of the government in cooperating with the Dutch, suggesting that the issue was being "milked for political purposes".

"It should be understood that rights are involved and it should be understood that political expediency is but temporary and it is not a foundation on which we should proceed," he said.

Instead, he suggested, the basis on which such action should be taken ought to be "on an unshakeable foundation of principle".