Richard Lord

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mit­ted no breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act when she stayed at the home of a friend, busi­ness­man Ralph Gopaul, months af­ter the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion last year.It was Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds who wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in May claim­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was nec­es­sary in the wake of the com­pa­ny owned by Gopaul be­ing se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der for a $40 mil­lion con­tract at state-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd.He claimed the Prime Min­is­ter was in breach of Sec­tion 27 (1) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. The NP trans­port con­tract, which was nev­er award­ed, was lat­er scrapped.

Chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Er­ic St Cyr, re­cused him­self from the de­lib­er­a­tions af­ter com­ment­ing on it pub­licly.Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the de­ci­sion of the com­mis­sion dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at her St Clair, Port-of-Spain, of­fice.She did so mo­ments af­ter an­nounc­ing the ap­point­ment of her per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Reynold Coop­er, as the new head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had a let­ter, dat­ed Ju­ly 25, 2011, from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and signed by the reg­is­trar of the com­mis­sion, Mar­tin Far­rell.

It read, in part:

"The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has di­rect­ed me to in­form you that a let­ter of com­plaint, al­leg­ing a breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, Chap­ter 22:01, per­tain­ing to your stay at the Gopaul's res­i­dence at Pasea, Tu­na­puna, has been re­ceived. The com­mis­sion has con­sid­ered the mat­ter and re­ject­ed the com­plaint."With a smile, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was "very hap­py to have re­ceived this let­ter from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion that deals with this sub­ject that had been in the pub­lic do­main for quite some­time."Mo­ments lat­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar left the room for oth­er en­gage­ments in her of­fice.