Prime Minister’s legal team says ruling by Appeal Court will not impact case involving Integrity Commission

July 31, 2026

The legal team representing Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness in the matter against the Integrity Commission says today’s ruling by the Court of Appeal will not adversely impact the case.

This morning the appellate court shot down the Prime Minister’s appeal against a Supreme Court ruling that refused to strike out paragraphs from an affidavit by the Commission’s director of information and complaints Craig Beresford regarding Dr. Holness’ financial affairs.

In the 47-page written judgement, the Court of Appeal concluded that after reviewing all the material placed before it, it was satisfied that the Supreme Court judge approached each issue with the requisite care and applied the governing legal principles in a manner that cannot be faulted.

It added that the Supreme Court judge’s conclusions concerning the relevance of the impugned affidavit evidence, the proper scope of the judicial review proceedings and the effect of her unchallenged findings at the leave stage were firmly grounded in established authority.

Also, in striking out those portions of the amended fixed date claim form that sought, in substance, to re-litigate matters already determined, the judge acted within her case management powers and correctly sought to prevent an abuse of the court’s process.

The appellate court said it did not find that any error of fact, law or principle, on the part of the judge, has been demonstrated.

As such, it said Dr. Holness’ appeal failed.

With the appeal dismissed the stay of proceedings is now lifted allowing the judicial review of the Commission’s probe into Dr. Holness financial affairs to move forward.

In reacting to today’s ruling, the Prime Minister’s legal team posited that the Appeal Court’s decision does not adversely affect the case as the team had already secured the disclosure of a wide cache of documents from the respondents.

The team said it remains of the view that it was also entitled to the un-redacted documents that were the subject of the appeal.

The team said it will now look ahead to the resolution of the substantive legal issues which remain before the court and are yet to be determined.