On May 22 this year South East St. Andrew Member of Parliament, Julian Robinson, alleged that there’s a free for all at the state-owned oil refinery, Petrojam.
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A few days after Robinson made those allegations, a statement was issued by the Jamaican members of the Petrojam Board of Directors.
The statement insisted that all was above Board at the oil refinery.
But a Venezuelan Director on the Board later distanced Venezuela from that statement.
Despite the statement by the Jamaica Directors, more allegations of irregular and inappropriate expenditure at Petrojam surfaced in the public domain via electronic and social media.
On May 29, Dr. Wheatley appeared on Cliff Hughes Online and was asked about the allegations made in parliament by Robinson.
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Dr. Wheatley addressed parliament later that day and said a probe is underway into allegations of irregularities at Petrojam.
However he insisted that the Opposition was playing politics with long standing issues which have plagued the entity across various administrations.
Dr. Wheatley also denied a suggestion by Central Manchester Member of Parliament, Peter Bunting, that institutions in his constituency benefited from approximately half of the donations made by Petrojam last year under Petrojam’s corporate responsibility programme.
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More questions were raised in the public domain about the alleged irregular refunding of airplane fares to Petrojam’s then Chairman, Dr. Perceval Bahado-Singh.
Mr. Singh and the two other Jamaican members of the Petrojam Board, Richard Creary and Harold Malcolm, eventually resigned. But pressured continued to mount on Dr. Wheatley.
A Nationwide radio report disclosed that questions were being raised about an allegedly fraudulent letter which was used by the Petrojam Board to reallocate funds from one project in Dr. Wheatley’s constituency to the next.
Prime Minister Holness and Cabinet eventually entered the fray and removed the Energy portfolio from Dr. Wheatley.
On July 11, Prime Minister Holness told Opposition MPs that he’s told Dr. Wheatley that if evidence surfaces that the former Energy Minister is guilty of Ministerial overreach, he’d demand that Wheatley step down from his Cabinet.
But Mr. Holness says he has no such evidence.
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Following the removal of the Energy portfolio from Dr. Wheatley, more questions were raised in the public domain about management of entities which fell under his watch – including the National Energy Solutions, NESOL, and the Universal Access Fund.
It appears those questions were the final straw which led to Dr. Wheatley’s separation from Cabinet.
Prime Minister Holness returned from an overseas trip on the weekend and met Dr. Wheatley.
That meeting reportedly concluded with Dr. Wheatley indicating that he’s willing to step aside to facilitate a review of the portfolios he once held.
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