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Govt. to seek out beneficial owners of oil blocks
Kaieteur News – Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo who holds an oversight responsibility for the oil and gas industry, disclosed yesterday that the government will be making efforts to ascertain the beneficial owners of Guyana’s resources, with first priority being given to the owners of the nation’s oil blocks.
During a press conference held at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, Dr. Jagdeo said that the government intends to have a greater understanding of the ownership structure of the companies with the said licences. He noted that this is important for transparency and for taxation purposes.
Jagdeo said that while a number of the companies which are operating Guyana’s oil blocks are registered in tax havens, including Barbados and the Cayman Islands, the government will ensure it goes after their information to ensure they pay their fair share of taxes.
Further to this, the Vice President was reminded that Guyana as a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is required to make public, the names of the beneficial owners before year-end.
Asked if Guyana will be able to meet this deadline, Jagdeo said it may be possible. He added that it would be problematic to get this done in two months for the mining sector but “first priority is oil and gas.”
Kaieteur News would have reported that the call for the release of information on beneficial ownership was made by EITI last month.
The international body had said it decided to crack down on this global problem since hidden identities in the extractive sectors only help to feed corruption and tax evasion. It also added that people who live in resource-rich countries are at particular risk of losing out when facing this problem as extractive assets are too often mis-allocated for corrupt reasons.
The EITI further noted that its standard requires public officials, also known as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), to be transparent about their ownership in oil, gas and mining companies.
The international watchdog said that this information, once provided by its members, will be publicly available and will be published in EITI Reports and/or public registries.
Once published, EITI said, law enforcers, civil society and others have a responsibility to scrutinize the information, and take action to hold to account those who misuse anonymous companies. It should be noted that countries which fail to honour the requirements of the international body could face expulsion.
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