Cabinet Minister Arden McLean was offered twice his asking price for piece of land he was selling along the Queen’s Highway.
Cabinet Minister Arden McLean |
Speaking in the Legislative Assembly on Monday while debating Leader of the Opposition McKeeva Bush’s Private Member’s Motion for Anti-Corruption Legislation, Mr. McLean said he had not told the story publicly before.
Mr. McLean explained that a man had come to his office with an appointment concerning other business. As soon as the meeting started, the man asked Mr. McLean about the land.
‘He said, ‘I understand you’re selling a piece of land’. I said ‘yes’, and he said, ‘I’ll give you $500,000 for it’.
‘I said I wasn’t asking that for it; I was only asking $250,000.’
Mr. McLean said the man responded by saying ‘I know’.
Upon hearing that, Mr. McLean said he became very upset with the man, used ‘colourful language’ with him, and asked him to leave his office and never come back.
Asked for more details about the incident on Wednesday, Mr. McLean declined to say who the man was or what the original appointment concerned.
‘I’m not going to say that because it would point fingers,’ he said.
Mr. McLean also would not call the offer a bribe.
‘He never indicated it was for something,’ he said. ‘I didn’t give him an opportunity to say.
‘I stopped it before it went any further.’
The land in question was a piece of family land along the Queen’s Highway. Mr. McLean said the land had been passed to him on the provision that he passed it down to his two sons. However, Mr. McLean said he was looking to finance his two sons’ education, and he said that if he sold the land and used the money for that, it would still be passed on to them.
Mr. McLean said Wednesday the incident happened about two years ago. He also said he never did sell the land and that he had instead made personal sacrifices and used his salary to finance his sons’ education.
One of those sons has now graduated from college and the other is in Cayman Prep and High School, he said.
Mr. McLean opposed Mr. Bush’s Private Member Motion, partially because a Draft Anti-Corruption Bill has already been tabled in the Legislative Assembly earlier in the current meeting. He also said Mr. Bush’s bringing of the motion was intended to suggest ‘the PPM government is full of corruption’.
Mr. McLean also called Mr. Bush’s bringing of the motion very convenient in light of the many negative Auditor General reports issued concerning his former administration and ministry.
‘He who comes for equity must come with clean hands,’ he said.
In principle, however, Mr. McLean had no reservations about anti-corruption legislation.
‘I welcome anti-corruption legislation because I know it won’t damage my character,’ he said.
Mr. McLean also said there would be no real need for anti-corruption laws if legislators were guided by a ‘good dose of conscience.’
As with the case of the man who offered him double for his piece of land, Mr. McLean said a good dose of conscience was needed at that slightest hint of something like a bribe.
‘When you are approached, that is how you have to stop it.’
Under the provisions of the draft Anti-Corruption Bill tabled in the Legislative Assembly last, a person offering an MLA a bribe of some sort would be liable upon conviction of imprisonment for 14 years.
A public officer who is offered a bribe is required under the draft Bill to report it to the authorities, failing which he or she would be liable to two years imprisonment or a fine of $20,000, or both. MLAs, however, are not defined as public officers in the Bill.
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