Before proceeding with today’s article, we would like to offer some brief comments on a letter published in last Saturday’s issue of the Stabroek News. The letter was written by Alex Graham on behalf of VHE Consulting that undertook the audit of Exxon’s post-contract costs and was published under the caption “Goolsarran’s Accountability Watch’s incorrect assumptions and conclusions may have been drawn from an incomplete or parts of the audit report’. Our comments are as follows:
(a) We did mention in our article of 25 March 2024 that we are unsure whether the 55-page document constitutes the full report. In the absence of any information to this effect, we had no alternative than to carry out our review of the document in our possession. If and when the full report is made public, we will revisit the results of our review to determine if there has been any inaccuracy in terms of our analysis and conclusions. It has been almost three years since the audit of the pre-contract costs covering the period 1999 to 2017 was completed but the related report is yet to be made public. So, we are not optimistic that this report will be made public any time soon.