Forestry directors should be hauled before the Courts

Jan 13, 2014 News

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– Chris Ram

For 18 years, the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) never submitted an Annual Report and when Minister of Natural Resources, Robert Persaud, did eventually submit reports for eight years in November last to the Parliament, it raised more questions than it did provide answers.
This is according to Financial Analyst, Christopher Ram, who in his latest writings on his chrisram.net outlet provided some insight into the reports and castigated both Government and Opposition, the Institute of Chartered Accountants as well as Auditor General Deodat Sharma over the reports.

According to Ram, GFC is just another example of the perpetuation of Bharrat Jagdeo’s legacy of financial lawlessness, a state that is as wide as it is deep.
“A state that allows incomplete and deceptive reports to be tabled and accepted by the National Assembly without any questions being asked or challenges raised.”
He said too that Guyana is in a state where the national accounting body the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana remains silent, even as basic rules of accounting are violated with impunity.
“One in which the parliamentary bodies are paralysed by their own mediocrity…One in which we even have a mini-parallel Consolidated Fund called (the) National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) and where the evidence of slush funds everywhere mounts.”
According to Ram, while the Government will not allow it and the weak opposition will not even ask for it, only a wide-ranging, independent investigation into the public financial management of this country generally and of NICIL specifically, can stem the relentless decline in accounting and accountability.
“The people of Guyana must demand it.”
Ram said that the actions of the combination of NICIL and GFC are not only an insult to the intelligence of Guyanese but a challenge and an affront to our decency.
“Surely even the most docile Guyanese must have some breaking point at which they say enough is more than enough.”
In his analysis of the reports, he noted that except for royalty, there are huge fluctuations in income over the years which are not explained.
“Surely citizens, if not the un-alert parliamentarians, would like to know why License Fees and Fines moved from $181M in 2007 to $336M in 2008 only to fall back to $102M in 2009.”
Ram said too that similar variations in the expenses are also evident, as is the case in operational expenses between 2009 and 2011, and Administrative Expenses which doubled between 2007 and 2008, fell 23 per cent in 2009 and then witnessed a 32 per cent increase the next year.
Ram also found that in the six years between 2005 and 2010, the GFC paid out nearly half a billion dollars in professional fees and said that “the persons to whom these payments were made should be identified and the purpose of the payments should be explained.”
Ram added that while the GFC acknowledged that it owes $1.1B in taxes, it has made no effort to pay any of its tax liabilities to the Guyana Revenue Authority.
“It is not as if the GFC cannot afford to pay the taxes it owes: it has around $1B in the bank.”
He said too that “an even more objectionable and most offensive line item in the Income Statement are two payments to NICIL.
The GFC paid some $300M to NICIL both in 2006 and 2007.
According to Ram, “these payments are unconstitutional and unlawful yet the Auditor General gave a clean audit opinion for these years…The qualified accountants in the Audit Office should hang their heads in shame to be associated with such blatant abuse of accounting and violation of the laws.”
Ram posited that one expects Finance Ministers to be zealously vigilant and robustly protective of moneys payable into the country’s Consolidated Fund.
“Instead we have NICIL, under the successive chairmanship of two Finance Ministers, being used to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars due to the Consolidated Fund.”
He said that there can be no extenuating circumstances that could excuse let alone justify such unlawful and reckless conduct, fully aware of the nescient state of the Auditor Office.
Ram went on further to say, “as if the above are not bad enough, the Auditor General signs off on financial statements approved not by the Board which has the statutory duty for the financial statements but by James Singh, the Commissioner.”
He said that for the $600M alone that they have allowed to be paid over to NICIL, all the GFC directors should be hauled before the courts while NICIL should be investigated and disbanded.
In flaying the Auditor General, Sharma further, Ram said that constitutionally, responsibility for the audit falls on the Auditor General although the 2007 Act itself grants the Commission the right to appoint the auditor.
He said that as is the case with those entities which no auditor would give a passing grade, such as NICIL, NCN and the Cheddi Jagan International Airport Corporation, the Auditor General, Sharma, chooses not to contract out the audit of the GFC, but does it himself.

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