United Progressive Party Senator Jonathan Wehner is calling for the restructuring of the Public Accounts Committee and the establishment of new parliamentary oversight committees, arguing that the current configuration of Parliament enables the executive to operate without meaningful scrutiny of public finances.

Wehner, who serves as the party’s public relations officer, made the case on Observer AM on Friday, where he used data drawn directly from the Citizenship by Investment Unit’s own published reports to argue that EC$236 million in CBI programme funds has gone unaccounted for over the past decade.

“Since 2015, there has only been reporting on one investment category in the six-month report, the NDF,” Wehner argued. “That is a breaking of the law for the past 12 years.”

Under Regulation 13 of the CBI Act, the CIU is required to produce a six-month report detailing the nationality of applicants, investment category chosen, and purchase price for each application. Wehner claimed that the unit has not complied with those requirements since 2015, and even the 2015 report fell short of full compliance.

Citing the most recent published CIU report, covering January to June 2024, Wehner noted that 739 total applications were received across four investment categories, 611 through the National Development Fund, 108 through real estate, two through business investment, and 18 through the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus.

Of those, only the 611 NDF applications appear in the report. From the inception of the programme to June 2024, he argued that 5,203 total applications were recorded across those categories, of which 1,180 have never appeared in any six-month report.

“That means there’s 1,180 applications that have a minimum of $200,000 added to each one of them. 200,000 times 1,180 equals $236 million that we have no clue about,” Wehner said.

He also raised concerns about a 2016 amendment to the legislation that gave the Minister Responsible, currently the Prime Minister, sole authority to direct which businesses and charities receive CBI investment injections, removing the role previously shared between the Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority and the CIU.

“That is a clear grey area for corruption, because there is no check on that power for one individual to choose which businesses get hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions of dollars,” he said.

To address what he described as a systemic absence of oversight, Wehner said the opposition intends to bring motions before Parliament calling for the establishment of joint select committees to oversee the CIU and the CBI programme, public health, and public works.

He cited Standing Orders 84 and 85 of the House of Representatives, which provide for special select committees and joint committees drawing on membership from both the Senate and the lower House.

With the UPP holding only one seat in the House following the April 30 general election and the BPM retaining Barbuda through Trevor Walker, the opposition has a combined two-seat presence in the lower House against the ABLP’s 15. Senator Wehner acknowledged the joint committee route was partly a practical necessity given those numbers.

“You only have two MPs in the lower house. That’s not enough to comprise a whole committee. So let’s have joint select committees,” he said.
Wehner also pressed for reform of the PAC itself, calling for the chairmanship to be codified as an opposition role and for the committee’s majority to shift away from government MPs.

By convention, the opposition leader chairs the PAC, a practice currently followed with Pringle serving as chair.

“Government cannot mark their own work. That doesn’t make any sense in any aspect of our daily lives or society,” Wehner said.

The opposition has proposed reducing the PAC to three members, with one government MP who must not be a sitting cabinet minister, and two opposition members.

“So that once we get to Parliament and we’re proposing these things, even if the government votes them down, the people understand what it is we brought and why it was incorrect for the government to vote against it,” he said.