The APNU+AFC government demitted office without accounting for how much of the controversial US$18m signing bonus from ExxonMobil was actually spent on legal fees pertaining to the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.
APNU+AFC had clinched a secret deal in 2016 with ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, EEPGL for what was styled as a signing bonus but was intended to fund Guyana’s legal fees in pursuing a judicial settlement of the long-running border controversy with Venezuela. The bonus had remained a secret for months until it was revealed in the Stabroek News by oil and gas columnist Christopher Ram.
Thereafter, a controversy brewed not only over the pittance that had been secured as a signing bonus for ExxonMobil’s major oil operations offshore but also over the fact that the money was being kept outside of the Consoli-dated Fund. After refusing to place the monies in the Consolidated Fund, the Granger administration finally relented. There is therefore no separate account for the signing bonus for the expenditure on the border controversy legal fees to be checked neither has the former government made a statement on this even though there was a major engagement before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in June this year and APNU+AFC didn’t leave office until August 2nd this year.
