The State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) is awaiting additional information it requested from PPP executive member Gail Teixeira regarding the complaint she lodged over a year ago about government’s handling of the controversial US$18 million signing bonus it received from ExxonMobil and its partners.
During a recent interview with Stabroek News, the organisation’s Deputy Director Aubrey Heath-Retmeyer said that when the information is received, the matter will be treated with the “same level of seriousness that the agency treats others with.”
Teixeira and anti-corruption watchdog Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc, early last year, lodged separate complaints with SARA over government’s handling of the signing bonus.
Heath-Retmeyer said that it was the director’s position that Teixeira is required to provide additional information.
According to the official, the agency is quite prepared to look at the case with fairness and an open mind but it has to be looked at in the order that it came to the agency which had received a number of other cases. He said that the ‘Pradoville 2’ cases, where top officials of the former PPP government including former president Bharrat Jagdeo obtained prime land at below-market rates, were with the agency for the “longest while.” He pointed out too that forensic audits were done and awaiting action before the entity was even formed.
Heath-Retmeyer said that people are sometimes sensational and would try to convey to the public that SARA is not an agency that has a balanced or even-handed approach in dealing with these matters; that the unit is one-sided.
“I don’t agree with that. I feel that we have a number of cases which we came and met…we’ll deal with that and at whatever point we have to deal with the current situation, we will deal with it. We have never shirked any of the responsibilities or are directed or influenced by any political figure,” he added.
“It’s just we can only move at a certain rate and if we had greater capacity, many of these cases would have been dealt with ever since. We just have limited
capacity and as these things come in, you will appreciate that we have to prioritise,” he said.
US oil company ExxonMobil paid the signing bonus to government in June of 2016 but there was no official acknowledgement of this by the David Granger administration until the information was leaked to the media in December 2017. Government’s decision to deposit the US$18 million signing bonus received from ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, and its partners CNOOC Nexen Petroleum Guyana Limited and Hess Guyana Exploration Limited, into an account at the Bank of Guyana, has been criticised as unlawful, with critics saying that the funds should have been placed into the Consolidated Fund as it is public money.
Following criticism, government said that the money, which would in part be used to pay Guyana’s legal fees for the border controversy case with Venezuela, would be deposited into the Consolidated Fund before being released. The administration’s handling of the signing bonus was also challenged in court.
