Not in conflict, asserts conflict of interest commissioner
P.E.I. Conflict of Interest Commissioner Neil Robinson is responding to media reports linking him with a company connected to the province's controversial plan to regulate e-gaming.
Robinson told CBC News that he was not in a conflict when he purchased a $15,000 stake in the company Capital Market Technologies in August of 2012.
And he says he's prepared to appear before a committee of the legislature to explain that.
At the time, CMT owned a significant stake in Simplex, the company that developed the platform P.E.I. wanted to use to regulate online gambling.
The e-gaming plan was scrapped early in 2012, months before Robinson bought into CMT. However there were still efforts underway to develop an online financial services hub on the Island.
And in July 2012, CMT — under a different name, Trinity Bay Technologies — signed a 60-day memorandum of understanding with Innovation PEI to try to make that happen.
It was the next month, in August 2012, with the memorandum of understanding still in effect, that the conflict of interest commissioner purchased his shares in CMT.
Still a shareholder
Robinson says he learned of the company from someone outside government.
He also says he asked Paul Maines, the company's vice-president, if CMT had any government involvement.
He says Maines told him it didn't.
On Thursday, Maines confirmed to CBC News that is what he told Robinson: that at the time, the memorandum of understanding was confidential and he wasn't allowed to discuss it.
There are no guidelines — no definition of what constitutes a conflict of interest — that apply to the conflict of interest commissioner himself.
All the same, Robinson maintains he was not in a conflict, and he and Maines both say, since that memorandum of understanding was suspended in 2012, the company has had no further dealings with government.
Robinson says he is still a shareholder in CMT.
He says he's writing a letter to the P.E.I. Legislative Management Committee, which is responsible for his appointment, to explain he wasn't in a conflict, and to offer to speak to the committee if necessary to clear things up.
