The onus was on Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman to tell President David Granger that he would be breaking the law if the US$18M bonus went anywhere else but to the Consolidated Fund, commentator and civil society activist Melinda Janki says.
For his role in allowing the illegal act of placing the money into a Bank of Guyana special account he should be fired she believes.
“The President has said that he took the decision to place the US$18M payment from Exxon into a Bank of Guyana account. This is most unfortunate. The President’s decision does not make the action legal so now we have a situation in which the President, the Head of State is involved in illegality” Janki, herself an attorney, told Stabroek News yesterday.