Saying the government deliberately attempted to mislead the nation about the receipt of a signing bonus from ExxonMobil for the renewal of its oil exploration agreement, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo called for Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman and Finance Minister Winston Jordan to tender their resignations.
“Mr. Speaker, what we have here is scandal, a major scandal. The Government of Guyana took money, large sums of money in the form of a signing bonus, did not tell the people, tried to put it into a special account, not paid into the consolidated fund or the GGMC,” Jagdeo told the National Assembly yesterday during the final day of debate on the proposed 2018 national budget.
Stabroek News in its Friday edition reported on a correspondence, dated September 20, 2016, from the Ministry of Finance to the Bank of Guyana (BoG) pertaining to arrangements for the signing bonus, which Trotman had been secretive about prior to yesterday.
In the letter, Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance Dr Hector Butts wrote
