After weeks of evasion, the government yesterday admitted that it received a signing bonus from ExxonMobil and its partners more than a year ago and never disclosed this to the public.
The admission came in the National Assembly from Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman following the publication in yesterday’s Stabroek News and Guyana Times of a letter of September 20, 2016 from the Ministry of Finance to the Bank of Guyana (BoG) seeking the setting up of an account for the funds.
Declining to disclose the quantum received, Trotman, during his budget debate presentation, said that the bonus was intended to be used for legal fees pertaining to the preservation of Guyana’s territorial integrity and he charged that this was a technique that the opposition PPP/C had also utilised.
The government’s secrecy about the
