Former President and Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday clarified that he had offered help to President David Granger over ongoing tax cases and not in the recovery of misappropriated funds as had been reported in some sections of the media.
“I said we will share all of the institutional memory we have about those tax cases because … we don’t want the government to lose those tax cases based on bad legal representations because it will cost the treasury billions of dollars and us as taxpayers, people of this country”, he said of his first meeting with President Granger and members of the cabinet last week.
Jagdeo said that “I did a rough calculation on about seven of those cases that I know, seven maybe 10 of them and the tax outstanding will be over twenty something billion dollars that we were pursuing in court. We don’t want this government to lose, this government to lose those cases…because if they lose those cases it (will) cost taxpayers money and this is money that can come into the Treasury that can help to finance development.”
At a press conference held at Freedom House yesterday, Jagdeo blamed media outlets for misquoting the President, stating that in the press’s attempts to spin subject matter the news gets skewed. “I think the president was misquoted particularly in the Kaieteur News. I think he never conveyed, I read what he said, he never conveyed the impression that it was millions of lost money through corruption that I promised to assist with,” Jagdeo stated.
Jagdeo said that the Head of State understood that the money being spoken about was the potential money to be earned through litigation. Jagdeo emphasized that the misrepresentation in the media was why he was leery of speaking about what was discussed during the meeting as nothing concrete had been established. “It was these cases, not money ostensibly lost or stolen as the spin has been about and this is why I did not want to speak much about our meeting because these efforts falter largely because of the spin.”
The former President further said that “I looked at the president’s statement, he never suggested that that it was billions of dollars (of) lost money through corruption that we promised to recover. We were talking about national matters and I believe as a responsible opposition we must share all of the institutional memory and the background.”
“This comes back to our approach I have made it clear that we are not going to seek, to block everything that or anything that comes on the agenda because the opposition puts it on the agenda. We will take a different approach from the one they (APNU+AFC) took when they had control of the parliament; they sought to block everything, the money laundering bill, the Amaila (Falls Hydro Power Project), the hospital, the airport project, cut $90B from the budget. I said our approach will be, we will support things that are national. We will support things that bring benefits to our people.
We will hold them to their promises that they made to the population and we will vigorously oppose things that we think that are bad for Guyana,” Jagdeo said.
He noted that the issue about the tax cases arose during the meeting because Attorney General, Basil Williams reported some difficulties in locating files for cases at which point Jagdeo said that the opposition was prepared to have the former AG, Anil Nandlall step in and acclimate Williams on the current tax cases.
“We want to share everything with them. We will work with them on this and about 10 cases I pointed out at the meeting ..(in) just about a few cases there are billions of dollars lying around in liabilities to the State,” Jagdeo relayed to members of the media.
He noted that the president seemed receptive to the idea but ventured that there has been no follow-up as yet on the matter by either side.
