The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has been asked to in­ves­ti­gate an al­leged breach of Sec­tion 28 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Anil Roberts. The com­plaint claims Roberts un­law­ful­ly dis­closed con­fi­den­tial fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion be­long­ing to three pri­vate cit­i­zens: Eloise, Storm, and Soleil Gon­za­lves.

The re­quest for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was sub­mit­ted on No­vem­ber 18.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, the al­leged breach oc­curred on No­vem­ber 11, 12, and 13 when Roberts re­port­ed­ly dis­closed sen­si­tive fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion about the Gon­za­lves fam­i­ly in a video post­ed on his per­son­al Face­book page, DouglAR Pol­i­tics. The com­plainant stat­ed that the in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to a le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tion with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and was ac­ces­si­ble to the min­is­ter sole­ly be­cause of his pub­lic of­fice.

The let­ter claims the da­ta was in the cus­tody or con­trol of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the HDC and should have re­mained con­fi­den­tial. It adds that the min­is­ter’s ac­tions amount­ed to an unau­tho­rised use of con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion not re­quired for any of­fi­cial du­ty or the needs of jus­tice.

The com­plainant ar­gued that the con­duct “falls square­ly with­in the core mis­chief that Sec­tion 28 was en­act­ed to pre­vent” and warned that the in­ci­dent un­der­mines pub­lic trust in the State’s han­dling of sen­si­tive per­son­al in­for­ma­tion. The cor­re­spon­dence al­so sug­gest­ed the con­duct “may amount to the com­mon law of­fence of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.”

Sec­tion 28 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act re­quires that any mat­ter of a con­fi­den­tial na­ture in the pos­ses­sion of a per­son in pub­lic life “shall be kept con­fi­den­tial un­less the per­for­mance of du­ty or the needs of jus­tice strict­ly re­quire oth­er­wise, and shall re­main con­fi­den­tial even af­ter sep­a­ra­tion from ser­vice.” The pro­vi­sion ap­plies to any per­son in pub­lic life or any in­di­vid­ual ex­er­cis­ing a pub­lic func­tion.

Ques­tions re­gard­ing the mat­ter were first raised with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on No­vem­ber 14, af­ter pub­lic con­cern emerged over the dis­clo­sure of HDC doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the Gon­za­lves fam­i­ly’s pur­chase of three Vic­to­ria Keyes apart­ments.

Guardian Me­dia asked whether re­leas­ing the doc­u­ments on so­cial me­dia could con­sti­tute a breach of Sec­tion 28, and whether the Com­mis­sion had re­ceived any com­plaints on the is­sue. In its re­sponse, the Com­mis­sion con­firmed it had re­ceived the cor­re­spon­dence but not­ed that it is “statu­to­ri­ly pro­hib­it­ed from dis­clos­ing its records and in­for­ma­tion by virtue of sec­tion 35 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act… ex­cept un­der cer­tain spec­i­fied cir­cum­stances,” and was there­fore “con­strained from pro­vid­ing com­ments” on the ques­tions posed.

The re­quest comes as the lead­er­ship of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment con­tin­ues to con­sid­er whether to re­fer the mat­ter to the Com­mis­sion. At a me­dia con­fer­ence on 13 No­vem­ber, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said she first need­ed to cau­cus with par­ty lead­er­ship. No fur­ther up­date has been pro­vid­ed since.