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Audit shams
(Kaieteur News) – We are struggling to recall when audits have had so many mysteries surrounding them. These are not audits of government agencies done by auditors operating under the authority of a constitutionally mandated Audit General office.
Whenever and however, those got done, there was the experience of delay upon delay in sharing the findings with the people whose monies were being spent.
The audits under scrutiny involve the most valuable component of Guyana’s economy, and by a wide margin, as well as having as its major participants, operators in the both the private and commercial sectors. There is America’s ExxonMobil, Guyana’s oil partner, and there are the auditors employed by the Government of Guyana, to be the people’s watchdogs and sleuths.
Three audits of ExxonMobil’s expenses have been completed and the PPPC Government has been the essence of stubbornness in keeping the nation in the dark. The smallest one was an audit of US$1.6B covered the period 1999-2017 and resulted in findings of US$214M still represents a mystery as to its final resolution. The US$1.6B audit was not only the smallest, but was also the slipperiest, and is now the oldest that is outstanding. The US$214M in findings plunged (or was pushed) to US$3M through some backdoor, slyly underhanded, arrangement, and for which a reliable junior whipping post was found.
A man took the blame, so that his seniors could claim clean hands, pretend at ignorance. The man in charge of the oil sector, Vice President Jagdeo, spoke of the matter going to binding arbitration.
We have never heard or seen an arbitration that has taken so long to get going, for a matter that is as small as US$214M in overcharged and improper oil expenses. The sense of knowledgeable observers and others who are expert in the field of auditing is that oil audits are part of a show, and are a sham, to a considerable extent. What could be said of this unknown arbitration that only adds to the existing layers of darkness, and of itself being subjected to some back and forth.
In October 2023, two years ago, Vice President Jagdeo informed Guyanese that the government was prepared to go to arbitration to get the US$214M ExxonMobil audit findings settled, and off the table.
Five months later (February 2024), Jagdeo reported under questioning that the government had not yet made a decision. This is the level of seriousness that the Government of Guyana manifests when US$214M, or over GY$42B, is at stake, and when there are droves of Guyanese who are without food basics. What to make of the PPPC Government’s uneasiness and hesitancy with an audit report that is disputed? Who is the PPPC Government really for, the interests of ExxonMobil, or those of Guyanese?
The second audit was for US$7.2B in expenses charged by ExxonMobil for 2018-2020, and which ended up questioning US$65.1M of the expenses the company said that it incurred. The quality of that second audit itself came in for questioning, regarding its depth and substance, how far it went, and where it did not go. The second audit follows in the trail of the first one, i.e., it is still up in the air, with Guyanese wondering why there is the need for these delays, these shenanigans. One question that refuses to be smothered is whose side is the PPPC Government on, who is its leaders fighting for: Guyanese advantage, or that which accrues to the benefit of ExxonMobil?
The third audit covered from 2021-2023, and at a massive US$19.6B was the biggest by far. Reports are that it was completed in May 2025, with Guyanese not knowing anything more. How many findings there were, and for how many American millions. Why would any government, any leader, that insists that the best principles are at work, would conduct the nation’s business in this murky, suspicious manner? What is there to be worked out, covered up, kept out of sight? When a government doesn’t have the ethical depth, confidence, to publish audit results to the people whose patrimony is involved, what can be said of that government? It is that it is engaging in a sham, and that it is a sham by itself.
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