The Integrity Commission has found that the People’s National Party’s, PNP, Ian Bell breached conflict of interest standards, when he sat in the room for committee meetings that considered his wife’s application to set up a business at the Ocho Rios Transportation Centre.
Bell is councillor for the Beecher Town division in the St. Ann Municipal Corporation.
The report was tabled in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Chevon Campbell tells us more.
According to the Integrity Commission’s director of investigation, the business in question, a gaming lounge housed in a 40-foot container, was built without the required building permit.
He says it has also operated since 2023 without paying any fees to the St. Ann Municipal Corporation.
The report states that in March 2023, Mrs. Shirlyn Campbell-Bell applied for space at the transportation centre. Her married name was left off the application.
According to the report, Councillor Bell delivered the application himself. It bypassed the corporation’s registry and went to the Commercial Services Committee as a supplemental item.
Councillor Bell is a member of that committee and chaired it from 2007 to 2016. The committee approved the application on May 1, 2023. Mrs. Campbell-Bell told investigators she mounted the container within days.
The director of investigation says she did not submit building plans until July that year, and they have still not been approved. The structure is about 648 square feet, more than six times the size of a standard shop space at the facility.
Councillor Bell told investigators he did tell the committee the applicant was his wife.
But he admits he did not leave the meetings. He says it was the chairman’s job to ask him to step out and that it was not his job to assist the chair.
The director of investigation rejects that. He finds that Bell, as the person with the personal interest, bore an even greater responsibility and that his silence amounted to acquiescence in a procedural breach.
Councillor Bell told investigators his wife’s married name was left off because the business is in the name of a company formed before they married.
The director of investigation finds the omission misleading and wholly improper. He says a reasonable observer may regard it as deliberately deceptive.
The report also faults the municipal corporation. It says the corporation sent a letter that appeared to give final approval before the process was complete and never sent the lease to the local government minister for approval, as required.
It also made no attempt to collect fees from the business.
The director of investigation says he would ordinarily refer the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions. But because of a previous DPP ruling in a similar Building Act case, he is referring it to the municipal corporation instead.
He recommends that Councillor Bell be formally reprimanded and considered for disciplinary review, and that all outstanding fees be recovered.
He is also calling on the government to make it a criminal offence for public officials to fail to disclose a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, the PNP says it accepts the Integrity Commission’s findings against Councillor Bell and supports the recommendations.
In a statement, the party says it has long required elected and non-elected officials to declare personal interests and remove themselves from any decision where a real or perceived conflict could arise.
The PNP notes that Councillor Bell maintains he told the committee the applicant was his wife and took no part in the deliberations. But it says he should have recused himself and ought not to have been in attendance.
The party says the absence of a criminal referral does not lessen the importance of the standard that was not met.
It describes Councillor Bell as having given many years of dedicated service and says it’s confident he will learn from the errors identified. But it says that record does not excuse what happened.
The PNP says integrity in public office is a standard it holds itself to, not only others.
