From the Diaspora… LET’S HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL AUDITING FIRM DO A FORENSIC AUDIT OF NICIL ACCOUNTS

May 27, 2012 News

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By Ralph Seeram
The National Industrial Commercial Investment Limited (NICIL) controversy will not go away anytime soon. Every belated disclosure by its CEO Winston Brassington (can somebody say if he is still the head or not) only raises more questions on questionable transactions.
Instead of “coming out of a hole” the PPP Government keeps getting itself deeper.  President Donald Ramotar has drawn himself into the mess; so has the Attorney General Anil Nandlall.
Either Mr. Nandlall does not understand his duties as Attorney General or he is a very confused person. Mr. Nandlall’s duty as Attorney General is to DEFEND the INTEREST of the GUYANESE people, not the interest of Winston Brassington, his brother Jonathan, or the PPP Government.
Furthermore, Mr. Nandlall needs to research what constitutes a CONFLICT OF INTEREST and what is FIDUCIARY DUTIES.
The Attorney General is quoted in Kaieteur News as saying “so because your brother sits on a board you are disabled in some way from doing business with that board” and further displays his ignorance by adding that as long that there “is full and frank disclosure, anybody can do business with anybody”.
Mr. Nandlall, after your research you will realize what a foolish statement that was. Here you have a head of a major shareholder company and an official selling not $1M or $2M but hundreds of millions of dollars in shares. Winston Brassington, on the right hand is helping to make decisions to sell and on the left hand he is buying on behalf of his brother and the Attorney General sees no conflict. Any layman can tell you something is not right here.
Let’s take the Marriott deal. It is clear that no public details were made of Government investment in the project. Kaieteur News was in the forefront in the fight to get details of the project and how taxpayers’ dollars were involved. There was certainly no full disclosure here.
Mr. Winston Brassington, as head of NICIL is negotiating, leasing and selling on behalf of NICIL to a company in which he is an official and has a financial interest. Enough has been written about that “sweetheart deal” where the Marriott will lease an acre of land for as I said before less than I can rent a parking space for.
When you look at these two transactions, even a jackass can see the impropriety if not illegality of such incestuous transactions.
Attorney General Nandlall must be privy to information that is not available to the taxpayers. A fully  audited up to date  report is not yet available but the  Attorney General, by his pronouncements, gives the impression that all is well at NICIL.
As I suggested before, Mr. Nandlall needs to brush up on conflict of interest and fiduciary duties, in his research he will find terms like “acting in the best interest of the stockholders” acting in good faith and “avoiding conflict of interest” and most important SELF DEALING.                                                                                                                                                     I will expand on the definition of self dealing because the example is so ironic; it fits into the exact situation of the Marriott hotel deal, and here it is, avoid self-dealing. “A self-dealing transaction is one in which a director enters into on behalf of the corporation that directly or indirectly benefits the director personally.
For example, let us assume that the director represents a corporation that operates hotels. The hotel chain is looking to contract with a laundry company to clean the hotel’s linens. The director of the hotel company enters into a contract on behalf of the hotel with the director’s own laundry company at a price that is twice the cost of other laundry companies for the same services.
In this situation, the director of the hotel company engaged in self-dealing because he entered into a contract on behalf of the hotel in order to unfairly benefit his own personal interests.” Here again our learnt Attorney General sees no wrong doing.
I would suggest to Mr. Nandlall that while doing his research he should look up how many U S Congressmen, State Governors, politicians and CEOs of large U S companies are now imprisoned because of similar circumstances.
We can “pick and choose” the facts to justify actions but as the learnt Attorney General knows it’s the totality of evidence that has to be taken into consideration, does the Guyanese public have a totality of the facts at NICIL?
This mess was not created under President Donald Ramotar’s watch, so he should not allow himself to be dragged down in the mess. The PPP lost its majority in Parliament because the electorate lost confidence in the PPP. The PPP needs to learn from that experience and restore its credibility, all this nonsense of no wrongdoing is not fooling or convincing the Guyanese taxpayers.
It is time to put this matter to rest to the satisfaction of all, especially the Guyanese public who own these entities. Let’s have an outside auditing firm by that I mean an international accounting firm like say a KPMG, to look at the book from A to Z, Alpha to Omega, from “womb to tomb” or any other way you want to describe it, let’s get it out “once and for all”.
The President said there was no wrongdoing; the Attorney General also feels so and Mr. Winston Brassington claims innocence, so no one has to fear going to jail.
Failure of President Ramotar to implement such an audit will only strengthen the public’s belief that the PPP is hiding something. That will not sit well with the voters at the next election. About the cost of such an audit, I am sure the government can find the money. It is time for the Government to stop hiding behind technicalities.
Ralph Seeram can be reached at email: [email protected]

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