The money, hundreds of millions of it, was to be spent on an ill-fated High Street project in contravention of the law, and on August 16, 2007, then Minister of Finance Ashni Singh was determined to keep it from the press.
“There should be no press release as this might draw attention to NICIL’s spending when ideally (it) should have been the expense of central Government,” he said, according to the minutes of the meeting of NICIL’s Board of Directors of which he was the chairman. He was talking about the $680 million transferred to government’s holding company, National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), to undertake construction works for government offices at 44 High Street.
NICIL’s Executive Director Winston Brassington had informed the Board that the handing over of the site, where the former Guyana Broadcasting Corporation once stood on Princes and High streets, took place earlier that day.
The contractor was Kishan Bacchus construction company. The company had been selected for the contract after the initial contractor backed out of the project.
Three years later, with the company owing government tens of millions, in spite of the substandard work done,
