Lead Stories

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

Chief Justice Zaila McCalla is to preside today in chambers over the first hearing into the claim brought by four persons who were successful last month in stopping the commission of enquiry into the collapse of the financial sector in the 1990s.

Leave was granted last month for the claimants to go to the Judicial Review Court to apply for orders to bar retired Court of Appeal judge Boyd Carey from continuing to sit on the commission of enquiry.

Supreme Court judge Ingrid Mangatal granted the claimants, who include former Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies, an injunction which stops the enquiry until the matter has been heard by the Judicial Review Court.

Lawyers in the matter will today finalise the date for the hearing by the Judicial Review Court. They will also decide the length of the hearing and the time limit for submissions.

It is the claimants' contention that Justice Carey, the chairman of the enquiry, had a debt with the Financial Sector Adjustment Sector (FINSAC) and was a member of family business Bev Carey and Associates, which had a debt with FINSAC.

No debt with FINSAC

The claimants, through their lawyers, had asked Carey to step down but he refused. Carey issued a statement in which he said he had had no debt with FINSAC.

The other claimants are former Financial Secretary Shirley Tyndall, former managing director of FINSAC, Patrick Hylton, and the Jamaican Redevelopment Foundation, which bought the FINSAC bad debts.

Dr Lloyd Barnett, instructed by Dr Aldolph Edwards, is representing Carey, while attorney-at-law Paul Beswick, instructed by the director of state proceedings, is representing commission members Charles Ross and Worrick Bogle.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com