ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Andall says the Integrity Commission has returned a gift because it considered it a token of small monetary value.
“I once received a gift, and I turned it over to the Integrity Commission, and when they did, they tested and checked, they recognized that it was a token of small monetary value, and they said ok, it’s fine, and they returned it to me,” Andall said.
Andall, who has been serving as Foreign Affairs, Export, and Trade Minister since June 2022, did not say who gave him the gift or disclose when and where he received it.
Section 45, Sub-section 1 of the Integrity in 2013 Public Life Act says, “A person in public life shall not accept any gift or reward from any person.” Still, Section 45 subsection 2(b) of the legislation says that the one exception is from a “dignitary” to ensure that a foreign officer or someone serving as a diplomat is not offended when giving a gift.
The law provides a gift from a dignitary “to be registered with the Commission.”
Despite the limitation, the legislation states that a public officer can accept gifts from (a) a community organization on a social occasion that represents the creativity of that organization and (b) a foreign dignitary, where the person in public life has reasonable grounds to believe that the refusal to accept the gift may offend the foreign dignitary.”
The gift registry regulation was established in 2019. It requires all public officers and people in public life to register any gift given to them that is valued more than EC$500 (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) or US$185 and to be lodged with the registry.
Once lodged, an investigation will determine the value of the gift and decide whether to keep it in the gift registry or hand it over to the officer who declared it in the gift registry.
As a guide to public officers, the Integrity Commission has since published eight circulars to educate public officers about accepting and refusing gifts.
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