Dawkins Brown gets green light to appeal accountancy board decision
ASINGLE judge of the Court of Appeal has put on hold a decision of the Public Accountancy Board, PAB, that Dawkins Brown, accountant and executive chairman of Dawgen Global, should pay the disciplinary body $1.6 million, pending the determination of his appeal. Brown, who was struck off the list of accountants in March, allegedly for professional misconduct, also sought a court order for a stay of the decision to remove him from the register, but Justice Jennifer Straw refused that application on the basis that the PAB’s decision had already been gazetted. PAB is an agency of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service. “It is a fait accompli, pending appeal,” Justice Straw said. However, she also determined that aspects of Brown’s appeal “have some prospect of success,” and therefore recommended that the hearing of the substantive appeal be accommodated as expeditiously as possible, citing the potential risk of an injustice to Brown, due to his inability to continue practising as a public accountant. Brown, who heads the Crowe Horwath Jamaica accounting firm, contends that the tenure of the board that struck him from the roll had expired, and, therefore, the PAB had no jurisdiction to remove him from the register of accountants. The PAB board members named in Brown’s court filings were Chairman Eric Crawford, Vice-President Garth Kiddoe, Patricia Hayle, Elizabeth Ann Jones, Veronica Warmington, Linval Freeman, Raphael Gordon, Dr Wayne Henry, Clive Nicholas, and Eric Scott. However, Crawford, in a letter to the editor published on May 22, said he resigned as president of the PAB, effective November 12, 2018. “I had absolutely no involvement in the matter relating to Mr Brown, neither before my resignation nor after,” he said. The board heard a complaint against Brown between January and February this year, but the accountant’s attorney, Hugh Wildman, said the board’s threeyear term had expired from May 2019. The complaint to the PAB that led to Brown’s removal from the register of public accountants was filed by Vistra IE (Bristol) Limited, a foreign firm, which alleged that Brown had failed to transfer ownership of a special-purpose vehicle used for a technology project that he provided services for. Brown has countered that the company, Affirmed Network Jamaica Limited, belongs to him, and further, that he is owed $87 million in fees for the work done. The tech services were provided to a consulting firm in the United Kingdom called Radius (Bristol) Limited, which was later acquired by Vistra. The PAB, following a disciplinary enquiry, decided in March that Brown should be removed from the register of public accountants. He was also ordered to pay the PAB $1.6 million to cover the costs of the enquiry. In ruling that Brown has some prospect of success on appeal, Justice Straw said the question is whether the board, which was mandated to act for three years, and which had been gazetted to that effect, would still be considered properly constituted merely by a written request of the minister of finance that they should hold over until a new board was appointed. In relation to the claim of bias, the judge noted that Brown alleges past disputes between himself and a member of the PAB who sat on the panel which heard the complaint against him, and that the allegations have not been properly answered by the PAB by way of affidavit evidence to contradict him. Justice Straw said it would be up to the appellate court to determine whether there is credible evidence of past disputes between Brown and the PAB member, and “whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the relevant facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased”. No date has yet been set for the appeal against the PAB decision to be heard.