?Con­fu­sion sur­rounds the au­then­tic­i­ty of un­de­clared Cay­man Is­land bank ac­counts al­leged to be in the names of a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and his wife. Is it a hoax, or is it not? That's the mil­lion- dol­lar ques­tion. An ear­ly draft of the speech which was to be de­liv­ered by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day was e-mailed to a se­nior Guardian re­porter by the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, short­ly af­ter 4 pm. Ac­cord­ing to the ear­ly draft, re­ports of the off­shore bank ac­counts were "a to­tal fab­ri­ca­tion and a hoax." The draft had stat­ed: "The ACIB (An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau) has ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed these re­ports and has de­ter­mined that they were a to­tal fab­ri­ca­tion and a hoax, cal­cu­lat­ed to cre­ate con­fu­sion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty." The AG, how­ev­er, did not make any such state­ment in the Low­er House that day.

Je­re­mie, who spoke in the Par­lia­ment around 3 pm and com­plet­ed his con­tri­bu­tion in less than ten min­utes, did not re­fer to the is­sue of the al­leged off­shore ac­counts in his speech. Ac­cord­ing to the es­tab­lished pro­to­col, all state­ments by min­is­ters to Par­lia­ment are draft­ed by the re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ments un­der di­rec­tives. State­ments to be de­liv­ered by min­is­ters in Par­lia­ment go through a process which in­volves vet­ting by Cab­i­net or the Par­lia­men­tary State­ments Com­mit­tee. The Prime Min­is­ter, as the chair­man of the Cab­i­net, has the fi­nal say over what gets said in Par­lia­ment. None of the usu­al Gov­ern­ment sources could say why Je­re­mie left out the ref­er­ence to the over­seas bank ac­counts be­ing a hoax. A spokesman de­nied knowl­edge of any pre­pared state­ment sent from the AG's De­part­ment. No one could ex­plain how or why the state­ment was sent to the Guardian.

?Je­re­mie: No de­fin­i­tive in­fo on ac­count

?The of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said yes­ter­day Je­re­mie made no men­tion of the Cay­man ac­counts be­ing a hoax in his state­ment to Par­lia­ment. He was re­spond­ing to a front page re­port in the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. The re­lease from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al stat­ed: "The fact is de­spite stren­u­ous at­tempts through of­fi­cial chan­nels to in­ves­ti­gate the ve­rac­i­ty of re­ports of Cay­man Is­lands ac­counts, the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is still not yet in re­ceipt of any de­fin­i­tive, of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion re­quired to make a state­ment on the is­sue." Je­re­mie said the Guardian re­port, which "pur­ports to be a record of his state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives" on Fri­day, was er­ro­neous. The re­lease said: "The Hansard records would show that at no time did the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ut­ter the words at­trib­uted to him in re­la­tion to an al­leged ac­count in the Cay­man Is­lands." The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ment said that he did not make any such state­ment dur­ing the teatime in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists ei­ther, "as the is­sue nev­er arose."

?Bank: No ac­counts ex­ist

?A se­nior of­fi­cial from the Cay­man Is­lands bank said last week that the bank "has no as­so­ci­a­tion with or pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of the for­mer min­is­ter you de­scribed in your ar­ti­cle" on March 13. Cay­man Is­lands is an off­shore bank­ing ju­ris­dic­tion which has strict cus­tomer con­fi­den­tial­i­ty laws.