Government has instructed that a recording of a conversation between Attorney General Anil Nandlall and a Kaieteur News reporter be sent overseas to be authenticated.
“I am not prepared to say that but you remember from the days of [former Police Commissioner Winston] Felix and Basil Williams we went to North America. So,
I suppose we would be going back to North America,” Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said yesterday, when asked where the tape will be sent to be authenticated.
He was referring to a 2006 recording of a conversation between the then Commissioner Felix and PNCR Member of Parliament Basil Williams that was reported to have been intercepted by convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan. The then Bharrat Jagdeo administration had deputed Prime Minister Sam Hinds to seek an explanation of the contents of the phone conversation and the tape was sent to an agency in California, USA to be authenticated.
Luncheon had earlier said that as with other documents, government was seeking external assistance to help in establishing the authenticity of the recording. “I mentioned this when we were dealing with this similar issue, the application of technology for nefarious purposes, interception and manipulation, distortion… that it would be investigated locally and we would be seeking external support and indeed instructions have be so given, I know for a fact, externally,” Luncheon stated.
A copy of the recording and statements have been handed over to the police by the newspaper’s owner Glenn Lall, who subsequently told the media that the lives of those at the newspaper were being threatened. Subsequently, he told Stabroek News that he had become aware of a plot to kill him and made a police complaint two weeks prior.
On the recording, Nandlall can be heard speaking about his knowledge of criminal activity and his use of government funds for personal expenditure. He has not denied that it is his voice on the recording and has said that the conversation was a private one between himself and a longtime high school friend, reporter Leonard Gildarie.
AFC Vice-Chairman Moses Nagamootoo, at a press conference yesterday, said that the issue was not one of authenticity of the tape but its content as Nandlall has never said the voice was not his. “It is really what the Attorney General himself has said, by implication, ‘I said those things but I said those things to my buddy,’” Nagamootoo noted.
“He hasn’t said anything to distance himself from the content of the tape, of the conversation. He is saying it is in private… this is an Attorney General that is there for 24 hours a day. So you have to own up to what you have said, whether you are saying it to your friend, you are saying it in the capacity that you own,” he added.
His position is similar to that of APNU Leader David Granger, who last week cautioned Nandlall that his defence that the conversation was private would not stand up in a court of public opinion as he “does not stop being AG at 4:30pm each day.”
In addition to the parliamentary opposition, the circulation of the recording has prompted calls from the Guyana Bar Association and the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers for Nandlall’s resignation or removal from office. The professional bodies said he offered knowledge of actual and planned illegal activities and noted that even in “private conversation” his comments were “deeply troubling and inappropriate,” while their candid nature calls his character and professionalism into question.
However, in spite of the damning statements made by Nandlall in the recording, the government has insisted that it is standing by him, while questioning how the recording was made. The government has publicly said that its focus is not about what was said during the “private conversation” between two friends and has dismissed calls for Nandlall to be removed from office and accused Kaieteur News of using blackmail tactics to stave off a tax audit.
