Former head of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) Joseph O’Lall is of the view that fuel smuggling is on the increase since he was brusquely forced out of the agency.
He claims that legal fuel sales have declined, possibly indicative of increased smuggling, which he attributes to a weakened and compromised GEA, whose abilities to curb the illegal trade in fuel have been undermined with his departure. He said the illegal trade was rampant in Essequibo.
Checks with the oil companies on whether sales were low turned up little, since they indicated that they could not disclose information without authorisation from their head offices overseas. And when this newspaper approached the man in charge at the GEA, Mohindra Sharma, he directed all queries to the Prime Minister.
O’Lall told this newspaper that the fuel marking system had been compromised and the agency could not effectively police the fuel trade. According to O’Lall, a fuel-testing device, which should only be in the hands of the GEA, has been seen in the possession of a known fuel smuggler.
O’Lall was sacked on December 31 for violating the rules governing PetroCaribe funds. Recalling the brusque way he was dismissed, O’Lall said: “President Jagdeo walked into the meeting and in a loud voice said, ‘I am very disturbed by what has been going on at GPL. O’Lall, you going home! Roger, ensure that O’Lall go home today. Ensure that you get Alli’s resignation. Brassington, you taking over as [GPL] chairman today!”
Ronald Alli was fired from his position as GPL chairman for allegedly under reporting the company’s losses.
According to O’Lall, the President charged that he had misled the Prime Minister on the fuel acquisition. O’Lall said the Prime Minister was at the meeting and he (O’Lall) then asked him if he had ever misled him. When the Prime Minister opened his mouth to respond, he related, he was sharply admonished by the President, who said the PM would speak afterwards.
However, he said, the President promptly ended the meeting soon after, giving the Prime Minister no chance to speak. O’Lall said that throughout the meeting, the President was the only one speaking, save for the time when O’Lall asked the Prime Minister if he had misled him.
The Prime Minister had said in a November 14 memo to President Jagdeo that he had directed O’Lall to pursue the course of action in relation to fuel supplies and GPL.
O’Lall still maintains that he did nothing wrong in creating a US dollar interest-bearing account as he was bringing in more money to the agency by being innovative.
Meanwhile, since O’Lall’s exit from the agency, four anti-fuel smuggling officers were fired from the agency and subsequently replaced. O’Lall is of the view that one businessman previously charged in relation to fuel smuggling is being given a free ride since his departure.
He told this newspaper that while he was on the job, he would send a senior officer to investigate this businessman after receiving intelligence that the man was transporting illegal fuel. But he said that on every occasion, the senior official came back empty handed. According to O’Lall, when he eventually sent other less senior officials to investigate, they came back with results, leading to the businessman being charged and placed before the courts.
O’Lall is of the opinion that the senior official is “in bed” with the fuel dealer and this had compromised the agency. “People who were straight under me now gone bad,” he said.
O’Lall believes that the course of justice was derailed with the frivolous delays of cases in the magistrates’ courts for want of prosecution witnesses. He believes that these were efforts to stymie the work of the agency.
The former head said that after one of those cases was dismissed in the magistrate’s court, he made it clear at a press conference that he would be taking his appeals to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). He said it was at this point that the charges of bungling fuel supplies and the opening of an unauthorised account surfaced.
He said they were trumped up and there was no plausible reason for him being fired. He said that other autonomous and semi-autonomous agencies open and close accounts all the time and this had never been a problem.
