How did QAII get its concessions?

Dear Editor,

I am told that GPC is suing me for $100 million, I don’t have $100 million, but if I did have such an amount to spare I would gladly spend it to see what turns up in court when Nigel Hughes cross examines Bobby Ramroop and Bharrat Jagdeo since he won’t be president then.

What I said was a fair comment based on an analysis of what was disclosed in parliament, in the media and documents which I have in my possession. Actually it is Mr Ramroop who owes me more than $600 million and I have sued him for breach of contract.

What Mr Ramroop should do is try to explain to the public, how and why he got all of his concessions to form the companies he has. After all, he has a newspaper (which is printed on machines which were supposed to be imported to create high quality images for use here and for export) and a television network, so explaining these concessions (if there is an explanation) should be easy. I want to warn him, however, that nowhere in his application for a printing press does it say that he will be printing a newspaper with a huge government bias as reported by the GECOM Media Monitoring Unit recently, in which case that equipment would not qualify for duty free entry to this country, especially since he is competing unfairly with both the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News who had to pay duties to bring in their printing presses. The next question is does the QAII Times newspaper enjoy tax free concessions as do the other companies Mr Ramroop formed? He also needs to explain how he got the duty free and tax holiday privileges he enjoys for the 5 new companies he formed during 2007 and 2008. I need hardly add that we need an explanation as to why he was not required to bid to supply the public hospitals and clinics with medical supplies which is required by our laws and which the Auditor General raised in his reports since 2006 and nearly every year since then. And that even after the Minister of Health assured the nation that it would cease it did not.

I have not researched the coverage of QAII by the Kaieteur News since after looking in your archives I found enough material to tell us that something is very wrong, and the letter you published on November 19, 2010 penned by Emile Mervin states plainly that the GPC QAII matter “raises many red flags and demands that the next government revisits both the new GPC and Sanata Complex deals by a forensic auditing team.” Also published by the Stabroek News were reports on the irregularities, ie, “MPs put new GPC $300M drug contracts under microscope” which appeared on January 16, 2010. Also in your issue of December 3, 2010 there is an article on sole-sourcing and the new GPC. There is a reference to irregularities in Business Page dated September 7, 2008, so despite close scrutiny by the Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament for several years reported and commented on by both the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, the government has continued to carry on these sweetheart deals with QAII and the new GPC.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira