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No straight answer from the PPP on the missing public assets.

May 23, 2012 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
It is disgraceful that the Board of NICIL/PU (Privatisation unit) and their political sponsors still cannot account for the $50 billion of public assets. What is most unfortunate is that President Ramotar has chosen to swiftly boxing himself into a corner with statements such as “government has done nothing illegal at NICIL”.
Such statements can be seen as him taking full responsibility for this financial “Ponzi Scheme” that exist at NICIL/PU, thus freeing the real perpetrators (the NICIL Board) of their “decade long” mal-administration at that organization.
Why would President Ramotar want to tarnish his Office with questionable issues brought forward from the Jagdeo regime?  Is there a debt still outstanding to Team Jagdeo by President Ramotar?
If there is anything to be done by the Office of the President, it is to distance itself from these “Madoff-type” financial activities at the NICIL/PU and launch a full Commission of Enquiry into its operations.  Does the President have any idea what has really taken place in the NICIL/PU Boardroom?  Is he not concerned about the financial opportunities lost because of immoral activities in the NICIL/PU Boardroom?  It is clear as crystal, that if President Ramotar does not distance himself from this Ponzi 0scheme at NICIL/PU soon, it will adversely affect what is left of his credibility.
But what President Ramotar does is not our primary concern. Our primary concern was appropriately addressed by Cde Moses Nagamootoo at the AFC Port Morant meeting when he said, “we are not interested in taking power away from the PPP; that is the people’s job.  Our core interest in to clean up all the skullduggery, corruption and financial shenanigans in the PPP Government so that more resources can be poured into the pockets of the workers, the poor and the powerless.”
The skullduggery at NICIL is a clear and present danger to the working class.  It is because of NICIL’s poor accountability for some $50 billion, the CLICO financial bail-out and a host of  other financial mischief  by the Jagdeo regime that today the Ramotar administration is squeezing the working class on a living wage.
We would ask the reading public to indulge us to share another pertinent observation of this mal-administration at NICIL that has burdened the Guyanese taxpayer with some $1.2 billion.
If one were to peruse the 2002 NICIL accounts, one would find on the CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET borrowing computed at $14,221 million.  Included in that figure is a sum of $1.2 billion which represents the aggregate of two loans (from Argentina and the EU) that were used to purchase valuable equipment, a pharmaceutical plant and other assets for GPC (a former state owned company).
The two loans to purchase the pharmaceutical plant and equipment were transferred to NICIL when GPC was sold but the actual physical pharmaceutical plant and other valuable equipment were transferred to Queens Atlantic.  The bad apples were left with the taxpayers and the good apples were transferred to New GPC Inc. /Queens Atlantic? Why?
Such a financial mismatch has resulted in the taxpayers being saddled with a debt of $1.2 billion but no asset to show for it. Those assets were quite clandestinely, comparable to a “thief in the night”, transferred to a private company controlled by a close associate of Bharat Jagdeo.
We can now understand why Mr. Brassington claimed that the final decision on all deals came from Jagdeo.
Where is the fairness, where is the accountability?  This is nothing but financial piracy and “buccaneerism” of the highest order.  Yet the members of the NICIL/PU Board have the audacity to lecture the Guyanese people about debate and proof?
So much for politics of principles from the PPP!
Dr Asquith Rose and Sasenarine Singh

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