A half a mil­lion-dol­lar pen­sion pay­ment giv­en to Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke in 2019—who had promised to re­sign but did not—re­mains an ac­tive po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Fraud Squad.

And while po­lice con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, PSA mem­bers are grow­ing im­pa­tient for the an­swers as Duke con­tin­ues to evade ques­tions about the pay­ment that he col­lect­ed be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2019 and No­vem­ber 2019.

The al­leged fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the PSA un­der Duke as re­vealed in the CNC3 Un­spun pro­gramme on Sun­day evening have once again sur­faced af­ter his wife’s com­pa­ny Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech was re­cent­ly iden­ti­fied as ben­e­fit­ing from mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts from the state en­ti­ty WASA.

In Sep­tem­ber 2019, Duke had de­clared dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that he was step­ping down from the PSA and was not con­test­ing the PSA elec­tions.

Duke said then, “I have reached a point where in my ca­reer as the PSA pres­i­dent where I would be leav­ing the PSA. I will be leav­ing the PSA this year on No­vem­ber 30. It will be my last work­ing day as the pres­i­dent of the PSA.”

Duke’s an­nounce­ment then had seem­ing­ly cleared the way for the PSA to pay Duke some $521,000 as part of a pen­sion pay­ment.

Then act­ing pres­i­dent of the PSA Ian Mur­ray in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia more than a week ago con­firmed that Duke re­ceived the mon­ey in three tranch­es, and it was paid in three sep­a­rate cheques to him (Duke).

The Sep­tem­ber 2019 min­utes of a PSA meet­ing al­so spoke to the pay­ment and al­so raised se­ri­ous con­cerns in re­la­tion to the ex­or­bi­tant pay­ments made in the month of Sep­tem­ber, in­clud­ing Duke’s pay­ments un­der the head­ing of ac­counts payable.

The min­utes stat­ed, “This amount is un­usu­al­ly high this month, as it in­cludes the bal­ance of out­stand­ing pen­sion to Wat­son Duke $347,796 and build­ing in­sur­ance of $177,039.”

The min­utes al­so ad­dressed stag­ger­ing loss­es of the PSA in 2019 up to Sep­tem­ber of that year which amount­ed to just over $1 mil­lion.

That was five times the loss­es of the pre­vi­ous year to date ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment in which the loss­es were a mea­gre $270,000.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed, “This deficit is as a re­sult of un­usu­al ex­pen­di­ture with­in the month of Sep­tem­ber 2019. These in­clude the fi­nal salary ar­rears pay­ment to staff to­talling $588,264, build­ing in­sur­ance of $177,039, and pen­sion to the pres­i­dent of $521,695.”

But Mur­ray, who was part of the PSA’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil at that time and privy to de­tails of the pay­ment, claimed it was not a pen­sion pay­ment that was made to Duke.

“A lot of peo­ple mak­ing this pay­ment out to be an ac­tu­al pen­sion of some sort, but there is an arrange­ment in the PSA when you out from union du­ties from the ser­vice or your job, in or­der to pre­serve your ser­vice while you are away from the job you have to re­mit 25 per cent of your no­tion­al salary to what­ev­er is your pen­sion arrange­ment, so if there is a fixed pen­sion plan, the PSA will re­mit that cer­tain amount of mon­ey that is 25 per cent of the no­tion­al salary to the pen­sion plan in case of the civ­il ser­vice they re­mit it the trea­sury,” Mur­ray said.

De­spite this ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by Mur­ray, he still could not say why Duke, when he had de­clared his in­ten­tions to re­sign from the PSA, did not present a res­ig­na­tion let­ter to the gen­er­al coun­cil.

“We would not have re­ceived any such let­ter from the pres­i­dent (Duke) on his res­ig­na­tion he would have made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment that he was re­sign­ing but ba­si­cal­ly re­neged on that an­nounce­ment.”

PSA in­sid­ers and for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers gave a dif­fer­ing view from Mur­ray, stat­ing that whether the per­son is paid a pen­sion or no­tion­al salary they were on­ly en­ti­tled to such pay­ment when they demit­ted of­fice. How­ev­er, Duke nev­er did such and ran for re-elec­tion and won. How­ev­er, those elec­tion re­sults are now be­ing chal­lenged in court.

Ques­tions to an­swer

For­mer PSA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Oral Saun­ders, who once worked on Duke’s team, said he had raised sev­er­al ques­tions about the pen­sion pay­ment with Mur­ray.

“When I chal­lenged the in­di­vid­ual (Mur­ray) if a res­ig­na­tion was pre­sent­ed to the coun­cil the in­di­vid­ual, he told me “no.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I re­quest­ed from him if there was a let­ter from WASA, which was the em­ploy­er of Duke and his sub­stan­tive post is in WASA, so I asked if there was a let­ter from HR WASA as to what was the su­per­an­nu­a­tion (re­tire­ment) ben­e­fits that he would have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed so that way the gen­er­al coun­cil be­ing the fi­nance body would have had a clear in­di­ca­tion, a clear idea as to how much mon­ey was en­ti­tled to Mr Duke. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, based on the PSA doc­u­ments at the time none of those is­sues were pre­sent­ed and I be­came ex­treme­ly con­cerned be­cause I knew on the sur­face of it, it vi­o­lat­ed the very con­sti­tu­tion of the PSA and what the mem­bers sup­posed to fol­low through on and even in the wider con­text the pub­lic ser­vice some­one can­not leave the pub­lic ser­vice to re­ceive pay­ment for leav­ing and then re­turn. It is sim­ply un­eth­i­cal, it is il­le­gal, it is just sim­ply can­not hap­pen in the pub­lic ser­vice and the PSA, our rules, in essence, is pred­i­cat­ed up­on that,” ex­plained Saun­ders.

Saun­ders said Duke was in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of the PSA Act Sec­tion 102 which speaks to when an of­fi­cer has de­cid­ed to re­sign or leave the PSA.

Saun­ders and oth­er PSA in­sid­ers, who spoke to Un­spun over the last two weeks, claimed that even be­fore Duke an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion one tranche of the mon­ey had al­ready been paid to him in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

“This is in­con­sis­tent with the PSA’s con­sti­tu­tion in terms of how the pres­i­dent and ex­ec­u­tive should func­tion. They are sup­posed to first come and present their in­for­ma­tion or re­quest to the gen­er­al coun­cil and then the coun­cil de­lib­er­ate and based on a ma­jor­i­ty vote, then they would have dis­bursed the funds but based on the PSA’s doc­u­ment, that did not take place. They ac­tu­al­ly be­gan pay­ment pri­or to the gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing and based on their doc­u­ments that pay­ment be­gan in the month be­fore which was ac­tu­al­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2019,” Saun­ders al­leged.

But Mur­ray, who was the act­ing pres­i­dent at the time of that par­tic­u­lar meet­ing, with Duke strange­ly ab­sent, re­butted this al­le­ga­tion that it was the gen­er­al coun­cil who ap­proved Duke’s pay­ments.

“The gen­er­al coun­cil did not ap­prove those pay­ments to Mr Duke. That pay­ment is due to all of­fi­cers if they so choose who would have served the pub­lic ser­vice, all past of­fi­cers that would have served in the PSA would have col­lect­ed that mon­ey if they so choose of the trea­sury of their re­spec­tive pen­sion ac­counts,” said Mur­ray.

But Mur­ray’s point seemed to be a moot one, con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence of the min­utes of the gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing in Jan­u­ary 2020, chaired by Duke him­self, in which a mem­ber seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on her un­der­stand­ing or no­tion­al salary, which could on­ly be paid when some­one demit­ted of­fice. The ques­tion had been di­rect­ed to Duke, who then asked the mem­ber which law speaks to her con­cerns.

On the record, she re­ferred to page 42, sec­tion 102 of the PSA con­sti­tu­tion. Duke failed to give any re­sponse.

Of­fi­cial com­plaint made to cops

It was this con­tentious fi­nan­cial is­sue that prompt­ed Saun­ders to file an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port to the Fraud Squad in No­vem­ber 2019. Un­spun saw the of­fi­cial po­lice re­ceipt ob­tained by Saun­ders. Saun­ders said in mid-March Fraud Squad had con­tact­ed him seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the is­sue and he co-op­er­at­ed.

Saun­ders said it was im­por­tant to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the mon­ey “was im­prop­er­ly giv­en out, or if it was done cor­rect­ly and above board then we are all hap­py but if it is not then there is cause for con­cern.”

For­mer First Vice Pres­i­dent Ian Mur­ray said he had noth­ing to hide and when the time came to co-op­er­ate with the po­lice he would.

“I have ab­solute­ly no fear if it comes to me, I have no fear of the po­lice. If they come, I will ful­ly co-op­er­ate and pro­duce what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion I have for them.”

Un­spun spent close to two weeks try­ing to get the man in the hot seat to speak to us about this half-a-mil­lion-dol­lar pen­sion pay­ment.

Duke was ap­proached at a joint union meet­ing some two weeks ago but brushed off the ques­tion stat­ing, “I can­not re­spond to that to­day. Not to­day trust me.”

He had even told the re­porter, “There are no per­son­al in­ter­views, I not tak­ing any­thing now.”

On Thurs­day, March 11 we at­tempt­ed to con­tact Duke by phone and left a voice mes­sage af­ter he did not an­swer. We fol­lowed up by send­ing him at least 11 ques­tions via What­sApp con­tin­u­ous­ly for al­most a week and a half-but al­though he ap­peared on­line, and the ques­tions were sent, he lat­er went of­fline.

On Mon­day, March 15 we again called his phone, and he end­ed the call in­di­cat­ing that we should text him.

We again pro­ceed­ed to text him the same ques­tions we had sent over the last sev­er­al days, but still nev­er re­ceived any re­sponse.