Boat done gone a falls

Nov 19, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – The President and Vice President must explain to this nation how it is they propose to undertake the post-2017 expenses and credits of ExxonMobil and its partners when the time period for such an exercise has elapsed.
The government bungled the process by not being able to contract a firm to undertake the exercise. And having bungled the exercise, it now wants to bamboozle the people by promising that it will still undertake the audit.
It is my opinion that not only would this be an exercise in futility, but it would also be impossible. The Accounting Procedures which constitute Annex C of the Production Sharing Agreement do not vest any right to conduct an audit after the deadline has passed.
What possible use can now be served by undertaking the audit? It will be a further waste of money because even if Guyana finds issues with the credits and expenses of the oil companies, it is debarred from doing anything about these since the two-year stipulation has expired.
There is no provision in the Agreement for reopening any audit after this two-year period. As such, no useful purpose can be served by undertaking the audit now.
Such an audit in any event would be impossible. The agreement provides for the Contractor – in this case Esso, Hess and CNOOC – to maintain and make available records only up to two years. So the oil companies no longer have an obligation to produce any records anymore and will not do so when they have been given a free pass on US$9.5B. They would have to be crazy to entertain a request from the government to produce for verification records which they are no longer bound to produce.
No audit can now take place in the US$9.5B in expenses. The Accounting Procedures provides, “For purposes of auditing, the Minister may audit, examine and verify, at reasonable times during the normal business hours but not more than once per calendar year, all charges and credits relating to the Contractor’s activities under the Agreement and all books of accounts, accounting entries, material records and inventories, vouchers, payrolls, invoices and other correspondence and records necessary to audit and verify the charges and credits.”
But the agreement also provides that this is done as part of the annual audit which has the two-year stipulation. And while it allows for a review of previous years’ records which were audited, this can only be done in respect to the annual audit for a particular calendar year. In other words, there is no way that Guyana can ask for the records which were not audited to now be audited.
The President and Vice President therefore must not make promises which cannot be fulfilled. They must be advised that what they are promising cannot happen and will not happen.
What is now needed is for the responsible persons to be held accountable for the foul-up. Those who failed the country must be made to face the music and account for their failures.
It makes a mockery that we are dragging a Permanent Secretary through a police investigation for an alleged wrongdoing totalling a few hundreds of thousands of dollars when billions of US dollars were not audited and we do not know whether the country has been overcharged.
The APNU+AFC has tabled some questions and made some requests in the National Assembly. They are seeking information. This is a good first step.
But I want to suggest that the matter cannot be allowed to end there. I can think of no greater scandal in our country’s history than this one and it would be unconscionable if no one is held accountable for this mishap.
There must be a Commission of Inquiry (COI) into this matter. The COI must be independent and comprised of international persons.
If the government refuses to accede to that demand, then there can only be one recourse – a vote of no confidence must be tabled immediately. It matters not whether the vote will succeed or not. It will allow for a debate on the matter which will provide the justifications and lack of justifications which would have been possible under a COI.
Wherever the chips fall, they must fall. Whether it is a Pharaoh or a peasant, someone has to take the fall for this scandal.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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