(Jamaica Gleaner) More than 36 hours after a Sunday Gleaner exposé on emails involving officials of the United States law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Solicitor General Douglas Leys and local attorney Harold Brady, the Government has dismissed the report as old news.
“The story carried on Sunday in The Gleaner concerning the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips (MPP) issue has not revealed anything of substance that has not been publicly stated previously by the prime minister,” Daryl Vaz, the minister with responsibility for information, said on Tuesday.
While reiterating the prime minister’s previous statements that the Manatt affair was a mistake and his regrets for the negative effects that resulted, Vaz repeated the Government’s position that it had not engaged in any contract with MPP.
“The prime minister gave the party explicit approval to engage with MPP and made it clear that this was not an engagement with the Government of Jamaica,” argued Vaz.
He was specifically critical of reference to a particular email sent by Brady.
In that email to Manatt officials and copied to the solicitor general, Brady said: “We have to talk on Monday after we have had a chance to brief the PM and the AG.”
Said Vaz yesterday: “It was erroneous for The Gleaner to have relied on this email as proof of an official Government of Jamaica engagement.”
He stressed that the email was written by Brady and not Leys.
According to Vaz, the prime minister has always maintained that the engagement of Manatt was an undertaking of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and not the Government, and “nothing in the Gleaner story, and indeed any of the emails, has challenged this position”.
Quoting extensively from the prime minister’s address to Parliament on May 11, Vaz repeated the claim that Manatt registered the Government of Jamaica as its client without the knowledge or authorisation of the Golding administration.
However, Vaz did not address the significance of the emails in supporting the law firm’s claims that it was working on behalf of the Jamaican Government.
