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Marriott Hotel is a complete sellout – Christopher Ram
Christopher Ram
The former Bharrat Jagdeo government handed the Chinese firm a Marriott Hotel project that essentially sold Guyana and its soul, chartered accountant and attorney, Christopher Ram, has said.
“…The contract for the construction of the so-called Marriott Hotel involves selling out Guyana and its soul,” Ram wrote in his Business Week column of the Stabroek News. The deal smacks of contempt and lawlessness, he added.
Ram described the project as a “scheme” that was conceived by Jagdeo after one of his friends failed to buy the Pegasus Hotel. The deal to build the Marriott was facilitated by Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, and Chief Executive Officer of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington, he said.
Ram grouped the Marriott deal in the same bracket as other projects in which public assets were sold under very questionable circumstances and to questionable people.
Ram pointed to illegal concessions granted to Jagdeo’s best friend Dr Ranjisinghi Ramroop, the award of large swathes of forest to Vaitarna of India, and the secret transaction to borrow billions of dollars from the Chinese to build a new airport.
He said that the Marriott project resembles the misdeeds of the Queens Atlantic mess, and the wrong doings of the Vaitarna and airport expansion transactions.
Winston Brassington
Ram pointed to the role of Brassington, the sole director of Atlantic Hotel Inc (AHI) and Ms Marcia Nadir-Sharma, the company’s corporate secretary and in-house attorney. AHI is an offshoot of NICIL which was created specially to build the Marriott.
“It is their hands and signatures that adorn many of the Marriott documents in which Guyana has relinquished sovereignty to the Chinese,” Ram declared of Brassington and Nadir-Sharma.
Ram pointed out that it is Brassington who signed every agreement with the Chinese company, Shanghai Construction Company, through its Trinidad and Tobago subsidiary, for the construction of the hotel.
In an October 1, 2011 correspondence Brassington sent to SCG, the Chinese company was asked to agree to a Design-Build Contract for the precise sum of US$50,918,112.89.
The Chinese company signed a document saying that it had submitted a tender of US$65 million based on an original design; but that the amount was considerably above the $41 million budgeted cost for the construction.
SCG was allowed to modify its bid, lowering the cost by US$14 million in exchange for several bargains.
As a result, Ram suggested that the Chinese company is exempted from paying all taxes; that it brings in any workers it wants.
Further, he said that Brassington agreed that the Chinese company would not have to hand in an Advance Payment and that it be shielded from arrangements for Claims, Disputes and Arbitrations.
“The result is a complete sell-out of every principle that served Guyana’s interest, an agreement that was re-written by SCG for SCG. And Mr Brassington agreed,” Ram declared.
In return, he said all SCG was required to do was assist AHI to secure funding for the project of US$30 million.
So far, the government has handed the Chinese company $2 billion in taxpayers’ money, and is yet to say who the investors are, if any. The government is also refusing to disclose any study which shows the project to be feasible.
Industry sources have claimed that there is no justification for building a project of this magnitude, with politicians arguing that the money would have been best spent on badly needed projects.
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