The APNU+AFC government demitted office without accounting for how much of the controversial US$18m signing bonus from ExxonMobil was actually spent on legal fees pertaining to the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.
APNU+AFC had clinched a secret deal in 2016 with ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, EEPGL for what was styled as a signing bonus but was intended to fund Guyana’s legal fees in pursuing a judicial settlement of the long-running border controversy with Venezuela. The bonus had remained a secret for months until it was revealed in the Stabroek News by oil and gas columnist Christopher Ram.
Thereafter, a controversy brewed not only over the pittance that had been secured as a signing bonus for ExxonMobil’s major oil operations offshore but also over the fact that the money was being kept outside of the Consoli-dated Fund. After refusing to place the monies in the Consolidated Fund, the Granger administration finally relented. There is therefore no separate account for the signing bonus for the expenditure on the border controversy legal fees to be checked neither has the former government made a statement on this even though there was a major engagement before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in June this year and APNU+AFC didn’t leave office until August 2nd this year.
When contacted last week, former Finance Minister Winston Jordan noted that the entire US$18 million signing bonus was transferred to the Consolidated Fund in January of last year. He stated that could not say how much was paid in legal fees for the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy now at the ICJ.
“The money had been transferred into the Consolidated Fund and the account had been closed at the Bank of Guyana (BoG) in January 2019,” Jordan told Stabroek News.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall told Stabroek News that the last information he has was that US$3 million had been requested through a parliamentary supplemental financial paper to go towards the legal fees, but he does not know how much is still owed.
Asked how much of it was paid to the ICJ legal team, Jordan replied, “I won’t know. I don’t know how much was paid to lawyers but that is an easy question that can be answered by Mr (Carl) Greenidge as he was both Foreign Affairs Secretary and Minister and Foreign Affairs as the ministry would be keeping records.”
Jordan did not say why less than one month after the No-Confidence Motion that felled the APNU+AFC government that a decision was taken to close the BoG account and transfer the monies when there had been a call for its transfer from the time it was received in 2016.
Former Minister of State Joseph Harmon had said last year that Jordan had determined that the time was appropriate.
“What the minister said was that it would be placed in the Consolidated Fund at the appropriate time. I believe now, based on what is happening with our budget, what is happening with the nearing of first oil in Guyana, what is happening with the fact that we have established and made law the SWF [Sovereign Wealth Fund] – it is now an Act of parliament – that it is the opinion of the Honourable Minister that it is indeed a correct time for that funds to be placed in the Consolidated Fund,” Harmon said, six months after the transfer.
Following months of silence regarding whether a bonus was paid, the government admitted to its existence in December of 2017, more than one year after it was paid, following a report published by Stabroek News and the Guyana Times, confirming a request for the setting up of an account at the BoG for the funds from the signing bonus.
Defend
President David Granger would later defend the decision, saying that he was responsible for the US$18 million being put into an account at BoG.
Government had explained that of the US$18 million, US$15 million would go towards legal fees for the Guyana and Venezuela border controversy matter and the other US$3 million would go towards capacity building for the oil & gas sector.
Giving a breakdown, Jordan had explained, “The account has two pieces – US$15 million to prosecute the case at the ICJ [International Court of Justice] and US$3 million for training and capacity building. All US$18 million is still in the account, plus the interest of course. During 2018, since we did not know when the UN SG [Secretary General] would make his decision, we did not put any amounts in the budget. So now, what we will have to do is go for supplementary. This supplementary will be based on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs indication as to how much they think we will have to pay the lawyers and others who provide services related to the ICJ matter,” he said.
Explaining the process for how the monies would be withdrawn and spent, Jordan said that when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notifies that payment to its legal teams are needed or when the capacity-building programme has begun, the money will be withdrawn.
“They will tell us, give us a schedule and we will go for the nearest supplementary provision for that sum so parliament is involved. All the debates that go through for supplementary will take place, all the questioning will be asked and when finally it is passed by Parliament and signed into law by the president, we will then approach the Bank of Guyana to transfer the said sum … to the Consolidated Fund,” he explained.
“Because supplementary has been passed, Foreign Affairs will ask for the release and then they will approach Bank of Guyana to purchase the identical sum and then pay the lawyers etc… It is a million times more transparent than what took place during the Suriname-Guyana [maritime] issue where US$10 million or more was paid and not a penny was passed through any account at Bank of Guyana,” he added.
The former Finance Minister last week again defended his government’s decision to keep the collection of the funds quiet saying it had the potential to disturb sensitive negotiations between this country and the UN on the matter.
“It was not hidden. It was not stolen. That it was, were comments raised by Jagdeo [former Opposition Leader and now Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo] and picked up by several others. They had a thing going with the UN, where we were in delicate negotiations to get the UN to take the matter to the ICJ and that anything that reeked or smelt… would disturb that. Speak to Carl Greenidge who was integrally involved. You won’t be told anything substantially different from what I am telling you now. You never carried a story in which you explained government’s side and what it did but today everybody is happy it is at the ICJ. Today everybody is happy,” he said.
“The reason why the money was not reported at the time, is because we were in delicate negotiations with the UN Secretary General to get our case put to the ICJ, and anything, anything for which Venezuela could have latched on to derail that process, we were not about to give them,” he added.
Jordan said he gets upset when he hears that government had wanted to hide the funds. “It is not a question that we were hiding the money. You don’t even know how delicate this negotiation with the UN Secretary General was,” he said while stressing that more be done to get to the intricacies of those discussions.
This newspaper reached out to former Minister of Foreign Affairs Karen Cummings as she had been the last substantive minister before a government change over on August 2 of this year. She said she did not know and that questions should be directed to former Attorney General Basil Williams.
“I won’t be able to say, you would have to ask the past Attorney General,” Cummings told the Stabroek News yesterday.
Several calls to Williams went unanswered.
Jordan said that Greenidge would have an idea of the status of spending as he is not only this country’s agent in the matter but was the lead government advisor on the matter.
However, both calls and messages to Greenidge were not answered.
This newspaper also reached out to current Attorney General Nandlall, as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs Hugh Todd.
Nandlall told the Stabroek News that US$3 million had been requested through a parliamentary supplemental financial paper to go towards the legal fees but he does not know how much is still owed.
“A financial paper had come to the National Assembly, presented by the then government, for approval to use US$3 million out of the US$18 million signing bonus to pay towards the presentation of Guyana’s claim to the ICJ. I don’t know if any other sums were paid, as there were no parliamentary sitting for over one year and half and monies were being spent unlawfully without any parliamentary approval,” he said.
“During the budgetary exercise in the national assembly now, hopefully, financial papers will be laid before the assembly to account for monies spent during that period to make for public scrutiny and information,” he added.
