Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips yesterday answered questions put to him by Opposition Leader Andrew Holness on Monday evening as the bitter verbal feud between the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) intensified ahead of the general election set for February 25.

Holness had posed the questions as he responded to Phillips’s demand that the Opposition Leader state how he financed the purchase of land in Beverly Hills, St Andrew, where he has constructed a multimillion-dollar house, which has been the subject of much debate.

Here are Phillips’s responses to Holness’s questions.

Q1. Dr Phillips, as a parliamentarian earning practically the same salary as the Leader of the Opposition, how did you afford the house you presently live in, which is valued at multiple times your salary?

A. My house was purchased by me and my wife (a practising attorney-at-law) on the open market on June 21, 1991 for J$1,500,000 with mortgage funding from Victoria Mutual Building Society repayable over 20 years and repaid via monthly payments over that period in accordance with the mortgage terms.

Q2. Were you a part of the Cabinet of Jamaica which created FINSAC, and which took away the property of many hard-working Jamaicans and decimated the entrepreneurial class?

A. FINSAC Limited was incorporated on January 29, 1997 by the PNP Administration of which I was a part to rescue the savings of many thousands of ordinary Jamaican depositors and policy holders, whose savings were loaned by those institutions to entrepreneurs (borrowers) who were unable, unwilling or forgot to repay the money they borrowed. That rescue was funded with taxpayers’ money which expenditure was recouped by realising the property voluntarily mortgaged by the borrowers to the institutions as security for the money they borrowed.

Q3. If the answer to question 2 is yes, did you acquire any of the properties taken over by FINSAC, or benefit in any way whatsoever?

A. No.

Q4. Did any members of the Cabinet that created FINSAC acquire properties taken over by FINSAC?

A. I am unable to speak for individual members of the Cabinet of the day, but expect each individual is able to speak for him or herself.

Q5. Do the answers to questions 2, 3, and 4 explain your unwillingness to complete and release the FINSAC report?

A. It is the FINSAC commissioners, not me, who are to complete the report (having already been paid millions for their services). They have not done so or, if they have, they have not sent it to me. I am not withholding the FlNSAC report from release. I cannot release something I have not received.

Q6. Do you own or have any beneficial interest in a house in Beverly Hills?

A. No.

Q7. Are there members of the Cabinet who have offshore companies?

A. I do not have one. I have no knowledge of whether or not any other Cabinet member has one. They can speak for themselves.

Q8. Will you declare any assets you have overseas.

A. I have no assets overseas and all my assets (and the assets of my spouse) have been declared annually in accordance with the law since 1989.

Q9. Will the officers of the PNP, including yourself, testify and come clean about Trafigura?

A. I have not been asked to testify. I believe that those who do testify will do so truthfully.