`Debate? I want to interrogate Brassington in Parliament committee’ – Ramjattan

Khemraj Ramjattan, parliamentarian of the Alliance For Change (AFC), says that he does not want to have a debate with Head of the Privatisation Unit and CEO of National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) Winston Brassington, but wants to interrogate and cross-examine him in a parliamentary committee on the question of improprieties.

Last night, Brassington challenged Ramjattan to face off with him in a televised debate with a view to setting the record straight on whether NICIL is operating outside of the law regarding its relationship with the Consolidated Fund. Brassington last night said that NICIL has paid over $9B in dividends to the Consolidated Fund since 2002.

“Brassington is not a member of Parliament so I do not want to debate him. From all the information he is very suspect in his answers in the press so far,” said Ramjattan in response to Brassington’s invitation.

“We are going to meet with him in the Economic Services Committee (of Parliament),” said Ramjattan. He also said that the party is prepared to challenge Brassington in the courts.

Further, Ramjattan said that the trend of commencing court proceedings with a view to preventing a parliamentary debate or consideration of a particular issue is something that the AFC is seeking to correct through a motion put to the National Assembly which it hopes A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) would support. Ramjattan said there may be litigation coming from the Government on NICIL with a view to blocking the parliamentary consideration that the Opposition has initiated.

“We will have to change that sub judice rule,” he said. He said that this change can occur once there is majority support and the AFC is hopeful that  APNU would see the wisdom of supporting. He said that once the motion gets the blessing of the majority of the House, it will be sent to the Standing Orders Committee where the changes would then be made and sent back to the House for approval. “We can literally delete the sub judice rule. It is most oppressive,” he said.

Ramjattan explained that the amendment to the Standing Orders that he seeks is not aimed at denying anyone justice in the court system. “It is just an archaic rule whose utility has been outlived,” said Ramjattan.

Brassington in his statement said that Ramjattan’s attacks against him remain unsubstantiated. In response to Ramjattan’s accusations  against him and NICIL, Brassington pointed out that the primary law applicable to NICIL is the Companies Act. Brassington said that the Auditor General is the auditor of NICIL, as set out in the law and that NICIL as a company has had its audits completed to the end of 2010.

He said that NICIL as a group has had its audit completed to the end of 2005 and mentioned the fact that the annual report for 2004 for NICIL has been laid in Parliament. “Additionally, NICIL has sought to lay in Parliament the audited accounts of its subsidiaries as soon as these are available. In the last two years, over 80 sets of annual reports/audited accounts related to NICIL’s subsidiaries  have been laid over to Parliament by the Minister of Finance,” Brassington said.

He went on to speak about a booklet on the transparency of NICIL’s transactions, first published in 2008 just after the Queens Atlantic Investments Inc deal, where Government retroactively amended laws to facilitate investment concessions.

Following Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh’s recent pronouncement that the figure being “bandied about as gospel” of $50 billion being held by NICIL is erroneous, Ramjattan said yesterday that the source of the information is from NICIL itself in its annual reports.

“In 2003 revenues were $33 billion,” Ramjattan said. He added that what must be considered are the collections from the sale of the state’s shares in GT&T, all of the properties sold by NICIL, dividends from various investments and the sale of all assets. “Our calculations show that with $33 billion since 2003, it must be no less than $50 billion,” he said.

According to Ramjattan,  Brassington is saying that NICIL has only $700 million and that the money has been invested. “That money must not be invested by Brassington. It must be invested by the National Assembly…we want to know how the money was invested and to whom and how much money was invested by NICIL,” Ramjattan said.

However, contacted this evening, Brassington said that Ramjattan should be accountable for the figure that he is calling since it came from him. Further, he said that it is ludicrous for anyone to take the total revenue of the total group and suggest that it is all NICIL’s revenue. “What one has to look at is what is related to privatisation and what is not,” Brassington said.