The Integrity Commission has determined that former Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Central, Dwayne Vaz should be charged for breaching the Integrity Commission Act, due to reported failure to provide information.

This was stated in the ruling from the IC director of corruption prosecution, which was tabled in the Lower House yesterday.

The ruling was tabled alongside the investigative report.

The report outlined that Vaz failed without reasonable cause to provide information requested from him by the commission, in respect of his statutory declaration for 2019.

The commission had sought to get from Mr Vaz additional information relating to the financial statement for Estelar Global Services Limited, a company at which he was a director.

It said Vaz missed the initial November 2020 deadline for submission of requested information and was granted extended time up to December 2020 to comply, but still failed to do so.

The commission said in February 2021, a notice to discharge liability was issued to Vaz, indicating that he had a month within which to pay the fixed penalty of 2 hundred and 50 thousand dollars, as well as to submit the outstanding information.

In march 2021, Vaz provided the requested information.

However, he did not pay the penalty.

The IC found that, despite Vaz’s partial compliance, that is, submitting the information, liability cannot be discharged because he did not pay the penalty.

The matter was referred to the director of corruption prosecution for consideration.

In the letter outlining the ruling, the IC indicated that, with respect to claims that Vaz failed to provide requested information, the former MP should be charged for breaching the Integrity Commission Act, for failure to provide information.