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Second audit report (again)
Editorial…
Kaieteur News- Guyanese heads should be spinning by now, given how the PPPC Government has them going round and round. An audit report should not be such a problem for a government. An audit report for US$7.3B that was supposedly completed and cleared for public release shouldn’t be a matter for discussion. Considering all that has gone on with audits of the oil sector, we have to ask whether this second audit report is a mystery or a cold case stuffed in some freezer to hide it. We try to track this audit report mystery to see what we get, and why the holdup with its release.
In November 2024, six months ago, Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority, Godfrey Statia, said, “The final audit will be released within the week. I have already given the go-ahead to VHE for them to do so.” VHE Consulting is part of the audit consortium engaged by the PPPC Government to examine ExxonMobil’s expenses incurred for the period 2018-2020. A reasonable person would think that, once the work was done, and the report finalized, the official report would be before all Guyanese. In another country with different leaders running the government, there could be such a standard, with citizens justified in harbouring such expectations. Not in Guyana, which has its own standards, and where its leaders have their own culture that even something as basic as a completed audit leads to runaround after runaround.
Six months after Statia gave his “go-ahead”, the people responsible for releasing the second audit report have gone underground, or on a go-slow. That was the first sign that the release of this audit report was causing the government some serious cramps. The second development in this cloudy affair occurred four weeks ago, and it restarted this audit merry-go-round. The political leader who gave himself the plum appointment of Guyana’s oil czar, Bharrat Jagdeo, when pressed for an answer on where the second audit report was, said it should have been released: “I will check why they have not done the same.” Experience has taught us that when Jagdeo starts to shift around with his answers, then it is time to tighten seatbelts. He is going to come up with a fast move that could throw the unsuspecting overboard. Jagdeo did not disappoint, for this is exactly what happened when part three of this disturbing audit story surfaced.
On Thursday (May 15), Jagdeo was pushed again for an answer on the whereabouts of the US$7.3B audit report that was causing VHE Consulting and the Ministry of Natural Resources so much trouble to put in the public domain. In the traditional Jagdeo dodgy manner, he has a ready answer, through a new stanza to his audit release poem: “I keep saying that these audit things and stuff, you got to track it down with the Ministry…documents and stuff, I don’t deal with the small issues.” He pretended not to have given a recent commitment to “check why they have not done the same”, and now had this brand-new story about “I don’t deal with the small issues.” An audit team selection that started in some uncertainty, an audit process that continued with some misgivings, and findings that cannot find their way before the public is now ‘small stuff’ for the nation’s oil boss. An audit report for US$7.3B qualifies to be among the “small issues” that are below Jagdeo’s time and interest. As he goes, so do the rest of the people.
For he had sent this newspaper to Minister Bharrat, who redirected to Bobby Gossai, senior petroleum coordinator, who passed the audit report hot potato to the ministry’s website. To nobody’s surprise, the final audit report for the US$7.3B in ExxonMobil expenses was conspicuous by its absence. This is what passes for oil sector oversight in this country. Guyanese are hungry, likely getting cheated, and the PPPC Government plays these games. The VHE audit report now seems to have radioactive particles in it. Everybody in the government is afraid to touch it, talk about it, or hand it over. Something is rotten, and that’s the smell all Guyanese are getting.
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