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SARA, JAGDEO AND THE GBA
The State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA) was formed three years ago with the mandate to recover stolen state assets and to reduce corruption in the public sector. Since then, SARA has investigated a number of cases, but it has not yet prosecuted anyone for corruption.
The reason is there was not much SARA could have done because it did not have the legal powers to prosecute anyone in civil court.
It was confined to investigate the reports about corruption.
However, that changed in 2017 when Parliament passed a legislation to change the organization from a unit to an agency with the authority to prosecute public officials, in civil court. With that in mind, critics had expected that SARA would have had at least a few cases before the courts by now.
The agency’s Deputy-Director, Aubrey Heath-Retemyer, stated that SARA is facing a number of challenges, including budget cuts in 2018, which have limited the hiring of only a few international experts with asset recovery experience to track and recover stolen state assets overseas.
Heath-Retemyer also pointed to the fact that Guyana is a ‘paper society’, which means that it will take much longer to peruse boxes of papers in order to get the information needed to determine wrongdoing.
He said that with the help of the Forestry Department, SARA has retrieved over two million acres of land given to supporters of the last administration and it is currently working to change the culture and behaviour of people as it relates to corruption.
Heath-Reteymer made it clear that under the last administration, the public lost some $200 billion in state assets through procurement fraud, the equivalent of $28 billion to $35 billion every year from 2008 to 2014.
In challenging the assertions made by Heath-Retemyer, Jagdeo said, if it is true that so much money was stolen while the PPP was in office, then why is it that SARU has not prosecuted anyone for corruption up to now?
Many believe that SARA is moving at a snail’s pace as it relates to bringing cases before the court. But the Deputy-Director countered that one of the biggest challenges facing SARA is the difficulty to access information from the commercial banks through the courts.
The anti-corruption agency official said that there is a stark disconnection between the judiciary and the thirst of the nation to end corruption.
The judiciary, he contends, needs training to ensure that the work of SARA and SOCU gets done like in Argentina and Brazil where the court is highly trained and far more in tune with what the national psyche is, and what the people really yearn for.
Heath-Retemyer reiterated that there is a disconnection in Guyana between the judiciary and what the people actually want.
He opined that, “there are times when the society demands so much of the legal system that there is a wave of change and the legal people are far more inclined to see justice prevail than they are to apply the law to stop legitimate progress in the direction of fighting corruption.”
Needless to say, the Guyana Bar Association (GBA) was displeased with Heath-Retemyer’s statement. It stated that the judiciary is an independent body; it does not exist to do the bidding of any arm of the executive and that the SARA official is attempting to direct the work and functioning of the judiciary.
The truth is SARA is part of the justice system; it is not an arm of the executive as suggested by the GBA. The assertion of the GBA that SARA’s statement could intimidate the judiciary is false.
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