Dear Editor,
I am writing to refute statements made by the Mr. Edward Layne and Ms. Gail Teixeira on Tuesday evening, that purport that Videomega Productions, the company that I manage, was awarded a multi-million dollar contract for the production of Brochures, Radio and TV Ads for the Department of Energy.
I was contacted by the department, and informed that based on my experience and knowledge of the industry, they would like to have an example of the kind of work that could be provided and it was I that informed them that I was now managing Videomega and would like the work to be contracted to the company as opposed to me personally. Minister Hughes was completely unaware of this as she has had no involvement with the company’s operations since assuming the post of Minister. As a matter of fact, she only called on Tuesday evening to find out about this issue after she heard of the false report being propagated. Both she and Ms. Alert, also mentioned in the statements made earlier, are no longer connected to Videomega.
When I was approached by the department, I was informed that they were in the process of reviewing the work of a number of service providers in an effort to find a fit suitable for the department, since this was a burgeoning industry and they wanted to be sure that any such provider selected would be able to represent the oil and gas sector adequately. As such, they asked that we produce three 60-second TV Public Service Advertisements in an effort to determine our suitability. The cost we charged was $832,200.
We were never asked to provide any other service and we want to be pellucid in this regard. We would like to state that we are deeply disturbed by the allegations being peddled and consider that this does not augur well for the maintenance of a stable environment when statements are made in the public domain by members of the press and sitting parliamentarians without any attempt at verification.
This would suggest that some are trying to score cheap political points at the expense of truth and good behaviour and that decency has long been thrown out of the window. We would trust that a public retraction will be made and that in future some effort will be made to determine the true facts of a matter before embarrassing oneself in such a shoddy fashion.
Yours faithfully,
Russel Lancaster
