Contracts of “political fat cats” of SARA to be scrapped

Contracts of “political fat cats” of SARA to be scrapped – AG

Aug 23, 2020 News

Attorney General, Anil Nandlall

Head of SARA, Professor Clive Thomas

Minister of Legal Affairs, Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, has announced that the new Irfaan Ali-led People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government will move to terminate the contracts of the upper management of the State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA).
During a press conference yesterday, Nandlall told the media that the new administration has no issue discarding the contracts of these “political fat cats” at the upper management of SARA.
Those, he said, pocket salaries of up to $1M per month along with benefits.
Nandlall, however, added that the Government is concerned about the welfare of the 40-odd secondary staff if the agency is to be dismantled.
“Our concern are the lower staffers…there are about 40 staffers in SARA and we shut the agency down, you are putting 40 persons out of work and that is our concern right now. But those at the top, we have no difficulty in disposing of their contracts,” the Attorney General said.

Deputy Director of SARA, Aubrey Heath-Retemyer

SARA, formally known as the State Asset Recovery Unit (SARU), was birthed in 2017 by the then A Partnership For National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition administration,
But according to the AG, it has been “rendered redundant” for their inability to produce a winnable case since being established.
It was for this reason that the agency, headed by Working People’s Alliance (WPA) member, Dr. Clive Thomas, was ordered to be disbanded by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, a few days ago.
Commenting on this, the AG said: “SARA has not done anything. As far as I am aware, it has filed a series of cases against PPP leaders, that’s all it has done in office, in relation to the infamous Prado Scheme as they call it.”
After Thomas was appointed head of SARA, he hired persons whose major qualification appeared to have been their association with the APNU+AFC coalition.
He later brought on board Aubrey Heath-Retemyer who is closely aligned with the coalition, along with Desmond Trotman.
SARA has received close to $600M to fight corruption.
In 2018, the agency had a budget of $260M and in 2019, it received $285M.
For its establishment in 2017, it also received another $116M.
The agency had pursued a number of cases but ended up with dead ends.
It had gone after the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) back in September 2019 with claims that it had acquired a property in Kingston that houses its headquarters for $244M, less than its actual value.
The High Court, however, ruled in favour of the bank, on the grounds that SARA lacked the legal standing for such a matter.
Further, SARA attempted to bring a case against Queens Atlantic Investment Inc. in an attempt to recover billions of dollars from the company over the Sanata complex.
SARA was expected to recover more than $3B in state assets from that deal but the case was halted because of a court litigation brought by social activist, Ramon Gaskin, challenging the legality of the SARA Act.