Dear Editor,
I write in reference to the Stabroek News article titled, `NICIL says has not received outstanding US$5M for GTT shares’ (April 29). To use President Granger’s summation of the situation, this “fiasco” is beginning to look like a comedy of astronomical proportions.
Since the government is saying that the monies were received, is it really that difficult for it to figure out who or which entity received the outstanding balance? Moreover, the government surely must have had a smoking gun for it to pronounce definitively that the monies were received.
An attorney representing NICIL accompanied Minister Harmon to China to investigate the status of the remaining payment. I’m assuming that she must have advised (why then would she have gone on the trip?) both Harmon and NICIL Chairman Odle on her findings. She must have advised both gentlemen that NICIL, being the contracted entity with the Chinese firm, did not receive the remaining balance. Additionally, she must have advised both gentlemen, based on the evidence she saw and the government says it collected on the trip, that some entity or person other than NICIL received the monies.
If this is the case, then NICIL should still try to recoup the monies contractually owed from the Chinese firm and also commence judicial prosecution for fraud against the entity purported to have received the remaining balance.
The fact that the Chinese firm paid the balance to a non-contracted entity is no business of NICIL, except that NICIL can use that evidence in court to show that the monies was not received by it.
Now that we know that NICIL was not paid. The ball is now in the government’s court to present its evidence to the public as to why it felt the monies were received and by whom.
Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling
