Floyd Haynes, the team lead for the third cost oil audit yesterday said that an auditor whose licence has been suspended by the ICAG had pulled out from the project prior to the submission of the winning proposal because of “scheduling conflicts”.
Haynes was responding to a news item in yesterday Stabroek News that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) on Sunday gave notification that Azzar Haniff of Eclisar Financial and Professional Services had his certification suspended and thus cannot issue statutory opinions in this country.
In a letter to Stabroek News, Haynes referred to the news item.
“Please be advised that due to scheduling conflicts Mr. Azzar Hannif of Eclisar Financial and Professional Services (Eclisar) has opted not to have his firm participate in the third Cost Recovery Audit. Mr. Hannif made this decision prior to the submission of our proposal. As such, neither Mr. Hannif nor Eclisar are part of the third ExxonMobil audit that was awarded to VHE. Please make sure that the necessary corrections are made”.
This was the first time that Haynes had said that Hannif and Eclisar were no longer part of Vitality, Haynes and Eclisar (VHE) which had won the bid for the second audit of ExxonMobil’s cost oil. The bids to conduct the third audit were opened on March 5th this year but there had been no statement from VHE that Eclisar was no longer a part of the audit team. Further the second audit which Eclisar is part of is still to be finally presented. Following questions by Stabroek News, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed on Thursday that he had spoken with Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Commissioner-General Godfrey Statia and he (Statia) had told him that the audit would be finalized on Friday. On Saturday Statia told this newspaper that the audit had been signed off and will be made public this week.
It is noteworthy that VHE is an acronym comprised of the first letter of each of the three components Vitality, Haynes and Eclisar. VHE is the winner of the contract for the third audit. The media was not invited to the signing of the contract for the third audit.
