THE Mid-Ocean revealed in June that Premier Ewart Brown was at the centre of a police investigation into corruption at the Bermuda Housing Corporation.

The exposé revealed that, during a two-year-long investigation into financial irregularities at the Government quango, detectives obtained substantial evidence ¿ both from witness testimony and documents ¿ to suggest that Dr. Brown had abused his position as a Government Minister for financial gain by selling his former Flatts property through the Government quango.

The secret documents also contained evidence suggesting Dr. Brown and Nelson Bascome were paid consultants of construction boss and Progressive Labour Party candidate Zane DeSilva and that both MPs were in on a deal with Mr. DeSilva to ship Government asbestos off island.

The files also alleged that Mr. DeSilva, who was building a new home for the Premier, was able to bury hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for the new property in contracts he had secured through the BHC.

When news of the allegations broke, Government immediately went on the offensive in a two-pronged attack. Firstly, it called for the media to be muzzled in a bid to block further details of the police dossier from being published. That tactic proved successful for a further five months until Monday when the Privy Council backed earlier rulings that the public had a right to know if its politicians had acted either illegally or unethically.

And it also adopted another tactic of damage limitation ¿ attempting to undermine the allegations by insisting that they were maliciously leaked by the Opposition United Bermuda Party in a bid to discredit the Premier.

In August an internal e-mail was accidentally sent to the media by the Premier's press secretary, Glenn Jones. The e-mail contained an outline of a strategy to draw the Opposition into the controversy and "thus make it a nakedly political issue".

Premier Brown's supporters have since insisted that the leak was instigated by the United Bermuda Party and/or white supremacists intent on bringing the Government down.

In an Opinion column in The Royal Gazette in August, lawyer Julian Hall claimed that a Ku Klux Klan cabal operated within the Bermuda Police Service that was determined "to bring down black leaders in Bermuda and who actually see theirs as a campaign of righteous purpose and direction".

Mr. Hall (pictured), who has acted as legal adviser to the Premier in recent months, added: "The real scandal is the carefully orchestrated plan to use the police dossier for election campaign purposes. UBP leaders were shown those documents many months ago; and if pressed I shall reveal who showed it to them."

Yesterday, Mr. Darrell debunked that argument, confirming that he alone had provided the media with details of the dossier.

"There's no truth in that, it's just propaganda," he said.

"I'm not involved in the UBP and anyone who knows me knows that there's no white person who would get me to do anything that I don't wish to do. I'm not influenced like this. I had no discussions with those people about this ¿ I did it on my own and I accept responsibility for it on my own."

Mr. Darrell added that, while not a paid-up member of the PLP, he had always supported them ¿ and looked forward to supporting them again at some point in the future.

"I'm not a member of the PLP but I've always been a supporter," he said.

"People go around saying that the UBP did all these bad things to us. No. People need to know the truth. The UBP didn't do that. A lot of black people were helped by members of the UBP. However, there are people in the business community who are associated, or even possibly members of the UBP, who, through corrupt business practices have harmed black people.

"But today, this Government could have changed that but they haven't addressed it because they've been too busy taking care of themselves. They're vindictive. Everyone talks about what the white man has done but name one thing that the UBP has done. They keep saying that they 'stole' this or that but name one thing that Grant Gibbons or John Barritt or Sir John Swan has done in terms of being dishonest? You can name a lot about Ewart.

"I am not a UBP guy but the truth's the truth. Sir John Swan contributed to assist the PLP in getting their building. Sir John Swan was behind the union getting their building. But the PLP and the union don't tell their members that stuff.

"I would say that 80 per cent of the black Bermudians who own their own homes today do so because of the schemes that were put together when Sir John Swan was Premier. Even before he started his real estate company, he started putting these houses together and making them affordable for these people, but the PLP aren't telling that to their members.

"Again, they're just saying, 'Oh, he's for the white man, he's greedy and just for himself'. Well he's a businessman ¿ he came up with schemes that he profited from as a businessman but in doing so other people benefited. What have any of those people in the PLP ever done? What can they single out and say, 'Well, I've done this and my people have benefitted from this'? The Premier has certainly benefited financially.

"Unless the PLP refocus, I really believe that black Bermudians in particular ¿ and whites ¿ will suffer badly. It's the same blacks who are out there jumping up and down supporting them now ¿ they're going to be the ones who suffer. If the country experiences a hard time, the people sitting up in first class won't be harmed.

"I think that, under the right leadership the PLP can be an effective party again but they haven't had good leadership and the party's only as good as its leadership. There's been a lot of intimidation and a lot of insecurity. Jennifer Smith and Alex Scott were unfortunate ¿ they were insecure and paranoid and so surrounded themselves with people who told them what they wanted to hear.

"Ewart Brown certainly is no dummy but he's doing the same thing ¿ he's taking care of Ewart and his clique ¿ at the expense of my black people. I truly believe that, under another term of the PLP, unless they can re-focus, people less fortunate than I are going to experience some real challenges."

In his 'Son of the Soil' letter, which was circulated widely on the Internet, Mr. Darrell wrote: "To dispel Dr. Brown's assertion that there is a political conspiracy involving the Governor and the Government's Opposition, the United Bermuda Party ¿ that simply is not true.

"I am a former supporter of the PLP looking to once again becoming a supporter and experiencing a Bermuda that the late Mr. Freddie Wade had envisioned for us all. I have taking this action because I strongly believe that it was wrong to just punish Mr. Terrence Smith when there is clear evidence within the Police's Bermuda Housing Corporation's dossier that others are guilty of wrongdoing."