Even as he maintains that the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) is an illegal entity, former Attorney General Anil Nandlall says the agency needs to first make its annual reports public and prove that it actions are legally mandated before pursuing any alleged wrongdoings.
In the wake of SARA announcing that it has started investigating the issuance of about 20 oil exploration licences, Nandlall has echoed former People’s Progressive Party/Civic presidents Donald Ramotar and Bharrat Jagdeo in saying that the investigations should be done but SARA is too biased to conduct it.
“So, in the end, we have the constitutionality of the SARA Act being the subject of a legal challenge, we have the two most senior functionaries of SARA holding offices illegally and the agency, itself, has contravened its own legislation by not laying its annual report in the National Assembly. How can the public repose confidence and trust in such an organisation and those who constitute it?” Nandlall told Stabroek News.
Two companies, JHI Associates Inc. (JHI) and Mid Atlantic Oil & Gas Inc. (MOGI), which were awarded the exploration licence for the Canje Block, offshore Guyana, during the period being questioned, on Saturday issued a statement saying that the process was proper, while noting that there were no oil discoveries prior.
“Neither JHI nor MOGI has received any request for information, and neither company has been notified of any pending investigations into the award of the licence for the Canje Block. Both companies welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter with duly authorised agencies of the Government of Guyana at any time,” the companies said in a joint statement. The companies broke their silence just shy of a week after this newspaper reported that SARA began investigating the issuance of about 20 oil exploration licences a year ago.
Nandlall said that not only does he believe that SARA is politically run but that the agency has no “locus standi” to speak about integrity, transparency or the rule of law as long as its operations continues to defy this country’s constitution.
“Professor Clive Thomas is a known politician and a leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), one of the political parties in the Coalition Government. Aubrey Retemyer was a leading member of the US chapter of the PNC. Eric Phillips’ long association with the PNC is long documented and he is also one of the political advisers to President David Granger; the narrow ethnic lens through which he interprets reality is publicly known. These are the three leading officers of SARA. Their political groundings and affiliations, without more, disqualifies them from being independent, neutral and apolitical, all of which are requisites for the holders of offices in any investigative arm of the State,” he said.
“Irrespective of how professional may be their intentions and actions, the political stigma which they emit will taint anything that they do with a political brush, in the eyes of the public. That is the cold, hard reality,” he added.
No way deflecting
He said his criticisms of the agency’s leadership was in no way deflecting from wanting an investigation into the oil blocks.
“I want to make it abundantly clear that I support investigations into decisions made and transactions done by public officers, including the Executive President in respect of assets of the State, once there is a basis for such investigations. Both the Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo, himself a former President, and former President Donald Ramotar, have publicly declared that they welcome any investigation into the allocation of oil mining blocks to the recipients. They both demanded that the investigations be done by a reputable international agency. They both opined that [SARA] is not qualified to conduct such investigations. With those sentiments, I fully concur,” he noted.
“SARA is riddled with controversy and is heavily politically tainted and influenced. This is aggravated by an aura of unconstitutionality which envelops its governing legislation and illegality in respect of its two most senior functionaries,” he added.
Nandlall believes that from its inception, the State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU), the precursor to SARA, “was conceived in and birthed from, the political womb of the Ministry of the Presidency.”
“There it spent its weaning months and was nourished from monies out of the budget of that political agency. Its three main officers were handpicked by politicians and there was absolutely no transparency or public competitive process in relation to their selection for appointment,” he stated.
Additionally, he pointed to the pending High Court action which challenges the constitutionality of almost every provision of the SARA Act. “These proceedings will certainly not end in the High Court. It will travel all the way to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ),” he stressed.
“So this challenge will be extant for the next five years, at a minimum. Moreover, the director and deputy director of SARA simply transitioned themselves from SARU into SARA when the SARA Act came into force. They were never appointed in accordance with the Act neither were their terms and conditions determined in accordance with the Act,” he added.
He reminded that while the schedule of the SARA Act provides that “the National Assembly shall, by a simple majority and on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Appointments, appoint the Director and the Deputy Director of SARA,” Thomas and Retemyer were never appointed by this process.
The schedule of the Act also provides that “the terms and conditions of the appointment of the Director and Deputy Directors, including their terms of office, shall be determined by the Parliamentary Committee on Appointments.” The National Assembly has had nothing to do with either the appointments or fixing the terms and conditions of employment of either Thomas or Retemyer.
Further, he added, “the schedule of the SARA Act further compels the Director to prepare a report at the end of each financial year, detailing how it has discharged its functions, its annual plans for the financial year and costs associated thereto, along with monies credited to the agency. This statement is supposed to be laid by the subject Minister in the National Assembly. As far as I am aware, no such report was ever laid in the National Assembly and SARA has been in existence since 2017.”
