Barrow speaks on the Auditor General’s report on the passport scandal

Dean Barrow

The Auditor-General’s report on corruption in Immigration surrounding the Won Hong Kim/Elvin Penner passport scandal was handed over on March twenty-first to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Immigration. Since then there has been no word on the findings from official circles and there wasn’t any either today. COLA has requested a copy of the report for its private prosecution against Elvin Penner and on Tuesday, the organization revealed that it has a leaked copy of the report. But PM Barrow chided COLA for requesting a copy of what he calls an interim report, and not the final version. That, he says, will be tabled at the House of Representatives in due course.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“You must know that you are not entitled to the interim report. When the report is final that will be laid on the table of the National Assembly, in the House and in the Senate. We can have all the debates that we want; we can make all sort of recommendations based on the reports, but you know why it is interim? Now COLA is saying oh because we see that the Auditor General said something about Miss Marin the Director, perhaps not cooperating and the minister being in possession of files. That’s why it is interim. The department, the minister, Miss Marin, gets a chance to respond. And then at the end of the day, a final position will be taken by the Auditor General. What is important is that in the meantime, the minister and his department has made every effort to fix a system that was clearly, admittedly broke including the hiring of the former Auditor General, Mister Edmond Zuniga, to help to police the new structures. So here again, nobody denies that there were problems, but government is attempting to fix those problems.”