PREMIER Alex Scott yesterday said he had no intention of asking any Ministers to resign over the Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal as he had no evidence to suggest they had done anything wrong.

And he said that, to his knowledge, no Minister or Parliamentarian had even been interviewed by the Bermuda Police Service during its two-year probe into the troubled quango.

He accused the Opposition of spreading rumours and added the BHC investigation had proved that no MPs from the governing Progressive Labour Party had been guilty of illegal actions.

Police concluded their investigation into the BHC this week and one of their findings was that "acquisitions of property and/or transactions were made with the BHC which involved elected officials ? including at Ministerial level".

And although Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith said insufficient evidence had been found to charge anyone apart from former BHC property manager Terrence Smith, many others could be accused of bad ethics.

Premier Scott told the that Commissioner Smith had been quoting the Auditor General when he made the "ethics" remark and that the police had not said there had been anything inappropriate about the transactions involving his Cabinet colleagues.

"The Auditor General may hold the opinion that something unethical took place, but I've never heard of any Minister being asked to resign based on the opinion of an Auditor General," Mr. Scott said.

"The Opposition want to make the public believe that I have a copy of such a (police) report. I do not have the report. Therefore there is nothing at this point for me to answer regarding the report.

"We must separate rumour from fact. The Opposition has spread rumours over the past 18 months or so trying to make the public believe that their Government Ministers and backbenchers have been involved in activities that are 'unacceptable', to use the Opposition Leader's language. This has been misleading.

"There has been a two-year investigation, independent of Government. Scotland Yard has aeen involved and to date, no Minister or Parliamentarian has even been interviewed, to my knowledge.

"If the police have found no evidence to even warrant an interview with any Parliamentarian, then it is unethical for the Opposition to spread rumours. There are protocols in place to protect all of us. That is what is meant by presumed innocent until proven guilty."

Mr. Scott said despite the police finding that a Minister or Ministers had been involved in transactions with the BHC, he had no intention of naming them or asking for any resignations.

"The police have not said there was anything wrong with any of these transactions," Mr. Scott said. "So if I go up to a Minister and say, 'You sold apartments to the BHC' and he says, 'Yes', what is there to say after that?"

The Premier also said he supported a modernisation of anti-corruption laws and he accepted that systems could be improved at the BHC and said the Government was working towards achieving that aim.

"As Premier, I accept the responsibility of Government," he said. "We have inherited from a previous PLP administration and they, from the UBP administration before that, a culture of doing business at the BHC that we all accept could be improved upon.

"Over the past ten or 20 years we have seen from reports that even the way contractors are paid or the way materials are stored could be improved."

Recent observations published by the Auditor General, highlighting the breakdown of normal procedures, had been noted and measures taken to rectify the situation, added Mr. Scott.

"The police, with the help of Scotland Yard, and the DPP have now investigated this case thoroughly," the Premier said. "One individual has been charged and other individuals have been dismissed from the BHC. Any suggestion that Parliamentarians were involved in illegal activities must now fall into the category of rumour."

One of the police conclusions was that established practices had been abandoned, something that was "endorsed and accepted at the highest levels of BHC operations".

We asked Police Commissioner Smith, through the Bermuda Police Service press office, whether it was true that no Ministers had been questioned and why, given that the BHC comes under the auspices of Government. Mr. Smith was unavailable for comment.