An initial examination of the forensic audits into state-owed entities have identified “many instances” where the laws governing the entities and their operations were “violated with impunity,” Minister of Finance Winston Jordan says but the opposition has again challenged government to bring the evidence.
Since coming into office last May, the APNU+AFC government has commissioned several forensic audits to review the performance and efficiency of publicly-owned entities, statutory bodies and projects and activities financed by or through public funds. Most of the audits have been completed, Jordan told the National Assembly during his budget presentation on Friday.
“A preliminary analysis indicates that in a number of cases, there were acts of dishonesty and duplicity, mismanagement of resources, opaqueness of transactions and a disregard for basic internal controls, among others,” he said while adding that this was compounded by the absence or non-existence of functioning Internal Audit Departments.
“The Audits identified many instances where the laws governing the entities and their operations were violated with impunity, in particular the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act and the Procurement Act,” Jordan declared.
He said going forward, the audits will provide a guidepost on enhancing accountability and transparency through improved operational procedures, financial reporting, corporate governance and compliance with applicable laws and regulations. The audits have led to expectations among the government’s supporters that prosecutions will follow.
Among the entities that were audited were the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Gold Board (GCB) and the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL).
A report on the NICIL audit found a range of infractions relating to projects such as the Marriott Hotel and the Pradoville 2 housing scheme. On another project overseen by NICIL, the audit found that $350M in public funds were wasted to construct the High Street building which was originally intended to house the Ministry of Labour
However, former President Donald Ramotar challenged Jordan to not speak in generality but “bring the evidence” as he believes that the government’s allegations cannot withstand scrutiny.
“I think they are grasping at straws. I am pretty confident that we had a system that can stand up to security….bring the evidence and I have said before and am saying again, if they find people culpable, let them go ahead and charge. We have nothing to be afraid of,” Ramotar told Stabroek News yesterday.
Ramotar admitted that there was some corruption during the PPP/C’s rule but said he believes that the present government has grossly exaggerated it. “I have never said that there was not corruption but I don’t think it is to the extent that they have been speaking about. The PPP/Civic government not only under my time but throughout has put many, many systems in place to fight against corruption,” he asserted.
“We were the ones that removed the Cabinet from awarding contracts. We are the only country in the Caribbean where our Cabinet doesn’t award contracts, we only give a no-objection. All of our contracts and purchases went to public tender and wherever we had to do sole-sourcing, it came to the Cabinet with proper recommendations from the tender board,” he added.
According to Ramotar, the PPP/C were the ones who re-implemented state auditing as before their ascension to office in 1992, there had not been any tenders for over 10 years.
“We put a whole host of systems in place to fight against corruption in our system. We have minimised, the PPP government has put systems in place to try to eliminate corruption. You have to realise that when we got into office in 1992, the ten years before that, there was no public audits, the Auditor-General (AG) was stopped from doing government books. (Former AG Anand) Goolsarran himself said so, he was the Auditor-General at one time,” Ramotar said.
“All the exposure came about because of us, we made sure that every year an audit was done and presented and even removed the Minister of Finance from having anything to do with the auditing so that the AG presented his books to the Speaker of the National Assembly,” he added.
Goolsarran, who conducted the forensic audit into NICIL, has recommended criminal charges and/or disciplinary actions based on the decisions made by NICIL and government officials. However, despite the report being submitted to the David Granger administration since October, no action has been seen in this regard.
Ramotar said he is confident that his party’s system can stand up to scrutiny and blasted the coalition government for what he called wastage of state funds spent on the audits.
“They spend millions and millions in audits. I don’t think they will find anything substantial and are talking about discrepancies this, that and the other…They spent $50 million on GuySuCo to find out there was no corruption. $50 million to find out nothing,” he emphasised.
Granger has said that the audits are being painstakingly done to ensure that all evidence is accumulated. “We are accumulating evidence in cases of malpractice and we want to ensure that there is an efficient administration and at the same time, there is no witch hunt,” he said in December.
