Opposition People’s National Party has expressed grave disappointment following the findings which were released this afternoon that Prime Minister Holness has been referred to the Director of Corruption Prosecution for potential conflict of interest breaches.

The findings revealed that during his tenure as Minister of Education, Prime Minister Holness awarded contracts totaling $21.8 million to Westcon Construction Limited between 2006 and 2009.

The report also revealed that the company’s directors Robert Garvin and Donovan Simpson have known Holness for more than 20 years with Garvin being personally known to the Prime Minister and having been employed both in his St Andrew West Central constituency and his personal business. 

Garvin was also a director of the Positive Jamaica Foundation Limited, where Holness remains a director.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding, however, chided in a release that the aforementioned revelations expose the country’s international embarrassment and notes that the leader of the country must at all times uphold integrity.

“A Head of Government should be beyond reproach, and it is unacceptable that he has been besmirched by accusations of impropriety, that the country’s principal integrity and anti-corruption body has found sufficient evidence to refer to our Prime Minister for potential prosecution, places Jamaica in an untenable position,” Golding lamented.

Golding added that while the news is devastating it is consistent with the Prime Minister’s troubling history with the Integrity Commission.

He shared that to date, the Prime Minister has failed to certify his 2021 statutory declarations of assets, liabilities, and income and has failed to sign the commission’s Leadership Code of Conduct.

These factors and the revelations made today as underscored by the Opposition have crippling implications for the Government as international bodies and other entities will have a hard time overlooking this blunder.