No law was broken in government’s holding company NICIL’s funding of the ill-fated High Street project with the funding for the project being approved at the parliamentary level, the entity’s Executive Director Winston Brassington has said.
A forensic audit into the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) had found that $350M in public funds was expended on the High St building, where the former Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) once stood on Princes and High streets. Though the project began years ago, it is not completed and its fate is unclear.
The audit report had said that at NICIL’s board meeting of 16 August 2007, Brassington inform-ed the Board that the handing over of the site took place earlier in the day. The minutes recorded then Finance Minister Ashni Singh as having agreed that “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 Govern-ment.” Singh was chairman of NICIL’s Board of Directors at the time.
“This is quite an extraordinary statement coming from the Minister and is a clear acknowledgement of the improper use of NICIL’s funds,”
