The State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU) is holding discussions with a team from the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR) which is here on a “scoping mission”, Minister of State Joseph Harmon said yesterday.
“This scoping mission will meet with all of these agencies and craft an action plan and that by the 28th March they will be back in Guyana to present that plan and to work out with the SARU on a way forward in that regard,” Harmon said at a post-Cabinet press briefing at the Ministry of the Presidency.
StAR is a partnership between the World Bank Group and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that aids international efforts to end safe havens for corrupt funds. StAR works with developing countries and financial centres to prevent the laundering of the proceeds of corruption and to facilitate systematic and timely return of stolen assets.
SARU head Dr Clive Thomas had told Stabroek News last month that they would meet with StAR to plot the way forward in transforming the unit into an agency with the authority to freeze assets and proceed with civil litigation alongside criminal investigations. SARU has come under criticism for engaging in asset recovery work and other actions when it has no legislative underpinning. “What we are trying to do is build from scratch an organisation designed to prevent the stealing of public assets now, and in the future as well as to capture and return some of the property that was stolen in the past, the recent past. So we have a two-fold obligation. To do that we need to establish the capacity to make that pursuit and that means building up our strength in many different [ways] field, organisational, legally, personnel, resources-wise, contacts overseas and all that sort of thing…it is an evolving global structure of which we are part that we are trying to build a net,” Thomas had said.
He emphasised that going forward, the unit needs to be a fully independent agency being propelled by autonomous forces to ensure it can pursue investigations free of favour.“I hope to get it done as soon as possible. I would have liked to get it done yesterday so it is the most pressing need that we have now because we don’t want to rely on other agencies to take action, we want to be able to do our own execution,” Thomas said of the pressing need to introduce a bill that will transform the unit into an agency.
StAR will assist in training in asset recovery, while here, which Thomas explained Guyana is in need of.
Harmon said that StAR will be visible in its operations throughout the country and has started meetings with persons from across society. “That scoping mission is here in the country, they started their meetings this morning (yesterday) they will continue meeting with various personnel in the government, civil society the judiciary and all agencies that can advise on what needs to be done in respect to the recovery of stolen assets,” he said.
