Email

Print

The donation was given on November 3rd, 2015- when everyone was already back in school. November third also happened to be the day before the November fourth, 2015 General elections. It's a highly suspicious transaction and Faber said he had no part in it. Here are his remarks on that and on the audit in generals:

Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"In response to the Auditor General's position and this is one of those rare cases when in fact they allowed for us to make a response to the findings. Certainly you saw an instance in there where I was asked or I was told that one of the directors indicated that they had given me five thousand dollars that was for some education program for Collet."

Reporter
"The Collet School Program"

Hon. Patrick Faber
"Which is a back to school program which is ridiculous because..."

Reporter
"The check was written in November, sir."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"Well see..."

Reporter
"Before elections…"

Hon. Patrick Faber
"...and that check was cashed and then the cash was given… No, I'm not into that kind of thing. Everybody knows that and in fact, if we wanted to do some kind of back to school initiative that would have come."

Reporter
"But Mr. Henry says he gave you the money."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"But I am telling you, as is in the report, because we were given a chance, in fact the auditors visited with me prior to writing up the report and asked me what is my position and that position is reflected as I said to you yesterday in the report itself. So that is my position as it relates to that one little portion that in fact directly involved me, but at that time I am sure that all know that in fact while I was the substantive minister, a minister of state presided over the affairs of the National Sports Council."

Reporter
"And that Minister of State has also been implicated in significant wrongdoing, the suggestion is breaking the Prevention of Corruption in Public Life Act, going against that."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"And you've heard the prime minister's position on that that he will in fact be speaking to the former minister of state and then of course the matter will be properly ventilated in the Public Accounts Committee."

Reporter
"Sir, would you speak about the timing of the release of these documents, the audit yes there are tabled yes, but they could have been tabled. I heard they were on the PM's desk from late last year, we had 3 house meetings since then. Do you think the timing is calculated to undermine you?"

Hon. Patrick Faber
"Either way you would have a criticism for the PM. If he released it now or he took another couple of months to release it then the criticism would be why is he sitting on this? Why didn't he bring it as soon as he possibly could? And so..."

Reporter
"Doesn't section 34 of the constitution stipulate that the finding should have been brought before the house within a 7 day period? I understand that this is from October of last year."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"I am not sure about that timeline, you would have to ask the prime minister about that. I am not sure, when he received it; it was Jules who is saying that it has been sitting on his desk. I am not aware of that timeline, so that question is better put to the prime minister."

Reporter
"Sir, while we can get caught up in the politics of who did this or Mr. Longsworth allegedly did this - what we are seeing in the sports council is a snapchat is a place that is not being run for the betterment of the children and the athletes. We've seen gross mismanagement of funds."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"What you saw and what was reflected and as our response that was generated by the current director of the sports council points out that there were many suggestions made even before the release of that audit to our ministry. We were aware of some of these bad practices and in fact there were many efforts, many accomplishments even from right after that point of my taking over the reins if you will, that we put measures in place to correct those things, so I can assure that what you see in that audit is not the common practice today in that sports council."

For his part, former Sports Director Henry twice insisted to the auditors that he did give Faber the money directly in cash. For balance, the audit found serial irregularities in Henry's conduct and management of funds particularly when it comes to the cashing of cheques.