Given that the controversial US$18 million signing bonus is in the state’s possession, the complaint made by PPP executive member Gail Teixeira cannot be investigated, Director of the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) Professor Clive Thomas says.
“We are going down a fool’s alley because we know where the money is deposited. There is no claim that somebody misappropriated the money and the law requires us to recover the assets of the state. So if the state is in possession of it, we don’t have a premise to work on,” he told Stabroek News yesterday, while emphasising that there is no evidence that suggests that the money is not in the state’s possession.
Thomas was clarifying statements made by his deputy Aubrey Heath-Retmeyer earlier this month that the agency was awaiting additional information from Teixeira. Teixeira, in a subsequent letter to Stabroek News said that this made no sense as the letter from the Ministry of Finance to the Bank of Guyana advising it to deposit the US$18 million in an interest-bearing foreign currency account was published in the media in December 2017, a year after the government received the money.
