The most disquieting report we have carried in a very long time appeared in our edition of July 8. It was an account of the extended version of VICE News’s video documentary titled ‘Guyana For Sale’, the initial portion of which had been carried on June 18. This part had consisted largely of an interview with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and his tenant, Mr Su Zhirong, along with a VICE reporter posing as a Chinese businessman interested in a deal here. The meeting had been arranged, according to the documentary, in order to demonstrate to the supposed entrepreneur that Mr Su, a middleman, had “access at the highest level.”
In the clips of the interview which were shown Mr Jagdeo did not implicate himself directly in the ‘business deal’, and he later strenuously denied any implication that he was associated with corrupt practices. As for Mr Su’s specific allegations about him accepting bribes, he responded that his tenant had abused their friendship for his own gain and had lied about him, and if VICE News had been discerning, then they would have realised they were “being duped”. Subsequently he announced he was bringing a defamation suit against Mr Su, who not surprisingly is no longer his tenant.
But this latest expanded version of the ‘Guyana For Sale’ feature is of an entirely different order. It will have Guyanese wondering whether they are really masters in their own land, and who in reality makes the decisions. What does independence mean if our assets can be sold off to greedy business interests, no matter what their nationality, through processes of corruption where the state and its agencies become irrelevant.
The VICE reporters who were native Mandarin speakers seemed to have had no difficulty going undercover to garner information on Chinese business practices here. The reporter, Ms Yeung, together with her undercover colleague who was referred to as Mr Chan, pretended to be investors interested in mining, logging and construction. They were eventually guided to what was said to be a lucrative deal involving prime lands on which a hotel and casino could be built.
They told Mr Su that their capital was tied up in China, which has strict controls over sending money overseas, and he arranged a meeting with money launderers. One of them told Ms Yeung “You give me RMB [Chinese currency] and I can give you cash tomorrow.” This was done by a procedure known as “flying money,” whereby money is placed in a bank account in China, and the equivalent amount minus a substantial fee is taken out in Guyana. By this means taxes and border restrictions can be circumvented.
The laundering fee, they were told, is based on the source of the money. The launderer said: “Tell me about your money. If it’s drug money, the client will tell me that. There is a way to handle that. For ‘dirty’ money from corrupt Chinese officials, we have another way to do it… If you want cash we charge 20 per cent now…” The least that can be said is that this speaks to a well-established system which has been in place for some time, not to mention the association with the proceeds of the drugs trade.
When the men were asked into which account money should be paid to ensure Mr Jagdeo’s intervention. Mr Su replied, “Once the money is in Guyana. I will give him cash. The Vice President finds this the easiest and most convenient.” Ms Yeung was already familiar with claims of the need for the Vice President’s intervention in business enterprises. When she enquired from a logging exporter, for example, which connection in the country was the most important, she was informed, “Basically, as long as you have a good relationship with the Vice President, you are set. You don’t need the President. The Vice President. One call will take care of everything.” In another context it was mentioned other Guyanese officials had to be paid as well.
There were various encounters with Chinese businessmen in different locations with the reporters wearing body cams, but one of them, at a retreat which appeared as though it might be up the Demerara River, the timber exporter referred to above advised them on how best to work the system. “Everything is under the table,” he said, while another interjected, “the whole country is like that.” A third one laughed and added, “It would be more worrying if they weren’t corrupt.”
Well the whole country is not like that: there are thousands and thousands of Guyanese who struggle every day to earn an honest dollar in order to feed themselves and their children. If they saw the documentary or read our report on it, they must be either disbelieving or feeling quite sick. In a kind of amorphous sense everyone knows about corruption, but nothing systematised on this scale.
Ms Yeung also met the General Manager of one of China’s largest construction companies which, she said, was linked directly to the Chinese Communist Party. The impression she obtained was that this company appeared to do business here “very much under the table,” going on to observe that the “Beijing authorities know exactly what is going on.”
She also said that Mr Su had showed them documents of businesses which he had handled as well as those of others in which he had played a role, including a large road project. There was also correspondence in relation to Amaila Falls.
Following the broadcast of this latest episode of Chinese corruption in Guyana, the Chinese Embassy issued a statement saying that both their government and the Communist Party of China have a zero tolerance policy in relation to corruption. China is a country under the rule of law, the statement averred, and Chinese nationals were requested to comply with laws and regulations as well as actively fulfil local social responsibilities. In a comment which could well have come out of our own Presidential Secretariat, VICE News was accused of seeking to undermine the China-bilateral relationship.
This is not good enough. Given what was shown on the video through the agency of body cams, Beijing cannot let this pass without appearing complicit. President Xi Jinping has built his reputation partly on fighting corruption, and the Chinese government should show some energy now in pursuing those of its nationals who are not only in breach of Guyana’s laws, but of its own financial regulations. It is a clear case of soft power gone wrong. It wants to believe, no doubt, that the Americans are behind these disclosures, but the issue is not who is behind them, but whether or not they are true. And prima facie there is a case to answer. It will be far worse for China’s reputation if Guyana pursues an investigation, while Beijing is mired in a posture of denial.
And then there is Guyana. After the Vice President showed a clip of the interview with Messrs Su and Chan in February before the first instalment of the documentary was shown, President Irfaan Ali said the allegations against Mr Jagdeo had been made for the sake of sensationalism. They are certainly sensational, but there is no sensationalism involved. The President then moved into traditional PPP mode accusing the accuser without answering the accusations. The government had received intelligence, he said, which raised questions about the VICE journalist’s (Ms Yeung’s) credibility. Information suggested, he went on, that she had been sent here by a “special group” with a “special interest”. “My government is above board,” he said.
Again, it doesn’t matter which ‘special interest’ she might represent, the point is unless the documentary were proved incontrovertibly to be a fake, which is highly unlikely, its contents demand answers. Nor does it matter too much how little Ms Yeung knows about the country Guyana; the contents of the video still demand answers.
This is not to say that Chinese businessmen have a monopoly on corruption; far from it. If officials accept bribes from them, they will undoubtedly accept bribes from all sources; it is just that in the case of the Chinese it might be on more of an industrial scale. At the very least it is more organised. The general situation is made worse by the fact that the few autonomous institutions which are intended to protect Guyanese are being emasculated, from the EPA with the firing of Dr Vincent Adams, to the dismissal of Dr Marlan Cole of the Food and Drugs Department – although the latter must have occurred at the behest of local Guyanese businessmen. It has taken nearly two years, for example, to appoint the Procurement Commission.
It is hard to pursue generalised corruption when the country lacks the tools to do so, but for the first time there is now an undercover account of what is going on in the Chinese sector. It now behoves the President to avoid the excuses and set up a Commission of Inquiry into what has been alleged in the documentary. Its members should largely come from outside the country for it to have any credibility, and ideally it should have the cooperation of the Chinese who under normal circumstances would not want their nationals answering before a foreign tribunal. If the Chinese themselves are sincere about combating corruption, however, there may be diplomatic ways around that.
If the government fails to address what has been revealed by VICE News, it will have failed in its mandate to the Guyanese nation.
