And the battle is still not won. For weeks, the opposition had been applying pressure to get the government to publish the nTan report, financed by the Bank of Mauritius to investigate the embezzlement of the National Pensions Fund (NPF) deposits at the Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB). While the prime minister, Paul Bérenger, had refused to consider the possibility of making the report public for weeks, he finally gave in last Tuesday after a daily newspaper chose to publish the executive summary of the report despite its confidential nature.

And while everyone thought the matter was settled, the Governor of the Bank of Mauritius (BOM) came up with a letter? saying that its Board has decided against publishing the report because the BOM is bound by confidentiality? and that the only way the report could be released was through an amendment to the legislation? and that he did not advise the government to do so.

The saga doesn?t end there. While the public was still debating whether to laugh or get angry at the BOM?s statement, Le Mauricien took matters in its hands and decided that, if government wasn?t prepared to act in the public interest, it would? by publishing the whole report.

It seems that, even while the public in general became aware of aspects of the report through the press, the BOM was still debating whether or not to make it public. The BOM stand that the only way to make the nTan public was through an amendment to the current banking legislation doesn?t hold water, according to many lawyers. One of them argues that the BOM owed confidentiality to the Mauritius Commercial Bank only in its role as its agent - when the MCB was its client and the BOM its financier.

But the Bank of Mauritius Act also provides the Central Bank with other distinct functions and powers: that of a supervisory and regulatory body. It was, argues lawyer Shakeel Mohammed, in this role that the BOM ordered an investigation into the MCB following the MCB-NPF scandal and other reports of misappropriation of funds.

<B><I><JUDSTIFY>A Supreme Court judge maintains that public interest overrides all. IS the newspaper that has published the report in breach? ?In breach of what,? he asks. </B></I></JUDSTIFY>

As a regulator, paid by taxpayers? money, the BOM?s allegiance should be to the public interest, argues another lawyer. A Supreme Court judge maintains that public interest overrides all. To our question whether the newspaper that has published a report deemed ?confidential? was in breach, the judge asked the following question: ?In breach of what?? He reckons that, in matters pertaining to institutions directly concerned with public interest, ?the public has a right to know?. Another lawyer mentions precedents in British law, which state that ?the duty of confidentiality was subject to the right, not merely the duty, to disclose information where there was a higher public interest in disclosure than in maintaining confidentiality?.

The prime minister has decided to let the ?courts decide? as MR leader and lawyer Rama Valayden has gone to court to ask for the publication of the report. In the meantime, the MCB has also gone to court to ask for a copy of the nTan report. While the BOM has given a statement to the police to try and trace the leak regarding the nTan report, which has found its way into many hands. A move that has perplexed opposition leader Navin Ramgoolam, who finds it ?surprising that the BOM has gone to the police regarding the leaks but had not deemed it fit to report fraudulent actions to the police?.

It is precisely this perceived soft attitude of the BOM towards the MCB that is being denounced by observers. Former BOM Governor, Sir Indur Ramphul, justifies this slack attitude by saying that the MCB was too important an economic player to sanction. He was referring in this particular case to the MCB Group Transfer Company that had operated without a license for a period of ten years. With the BOM?s knowledge. And without sanctions.

A retired bank manager argues in an interview published in a weekly that fraudulent transactions such as those that took place at the MCB have taken place in banks the world over and that, while they were wrong, they were also commonplace. An actuary replies that actions of this kind made a joke of corporate governance and that, in the spirit of transparency and decency, the bad guys had to go and be replaced by new ones. ?One has to be able to differentiate the men from the institution,? she says.

The debate is now on another level. There seems to be an attempt to explain the actions of the MCB and ?put them in their context? and also justify the stand of the BOM by saying it has not remained blind to fraudulent transactions but that it did not have much leeway. Prime minister Bérenger set the tone and said that, contrarily to the NPF affair, the other cases set out in the nTan report concerned ?playing around with fixed deposits.? To which Ramgoolam replied in a press conference, citing the Oxford dictionary, that ?a fraud is a criminal deception, a dishonest trick?.

So, which is to win, corporate governance and public interest or opacity and secrecy?