{"id":36832,"date":"2016-09-23T12:07:13","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/?p=36832"},"modified":"2016-09-27T12:10:02","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T16:10:02","slug":"jagdeo-urges-nicil-to-come-clean-on-missing-gtt-shares-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/jagdeo-urges-nicil-to-come-clean-on-missing-gtt-shares-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Jagdeo urges NICIL to come  clean on missing GT&#038;T shares\u2019 money"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_36837\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-36837\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-36837\" src=\"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4-300x285.jpg\" alt=\"Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo \" width=\"300\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4-300x285.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4-768x729.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4-1024x972.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4.jpg 1053w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-36837\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h4>Concerns are mounting as to what really happened with the missing US$5 million for Government\u2019s GT&amp;T shares, as responsibility for the disclosure of a report on the findings continues to shift from person to person.<\/h4>\n<h4>Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, in a brief telephone interview from New York, questioned why the report has not yet been made public, stating that \u201cit is clear as day that either NICIL [National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited] or (Joseph) Harmon can release the findings\u201d.<\/h4>\n<h4>\u201cI don\u2019t understand why they don\u2019t release the information,\u201d he said, urging Government to make the disclosure quickly.<\/h4>\n<figure id=\"attachment_36838\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-36838\" style=\"width: 231px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-36838\" src=\"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Maurice-Odle-231x300.jpg\" alt=\"NICIL Chairman,  Dr Maurice Odle \" width=\"231\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Maurice-Odle-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Maurice-Odle.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-36838\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NICIL Chairman,<br \/>Dr Maurice Odle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h4>NICIL sold the Government\u2019s shares in GT&amp;T for US$30 million, of which US$25 million was received at the signing of the agreement. However, the outstanding money, which should have been paid by the end of December 2015, has not been found.<\/h4>\n<h4>When the US$25 million was paid, it was made by international wire, from one bank to another. The payment into NICIL\u2019s bank account would have been easy to trace.<\/h4>\n<h4>Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, who spoke on Government\u2019s behalf, had disclosed that Harmon, the Minister of State, was able to recover documents, which revealed that the monies were paid. But NICIL quickly slapped it down, stating that Guyana\u2019s former Ambassador to China, David Dabydeen, had facilitated the US$5 million debt waiver with Datang, the Chinese company, on the grounds that it was not granted the same minority protection rights enjoyed by NICIL (that is, two, instead of one, representatives on the GT&amp;T Board of Directors).<\/h4>\n<h4>However, NICIL\u2019s Chairman, Dr Maurice Odle, when contacted, pointedly refused to comment on the findings of the report, saying, \u201cI\u2019m not prepared to answer any questions.\u201d<\/h4>\n<h4>He stated that the matter was currently \u201cin the hands of international lawyers\u201d.<\/h4>\n<h4>The Minister of State told <em>Guyana Times International <\/em>that he had submitted his report to NICIL and it was up to the State holding company to determine if it wanted to disclose the findings of that report.<\/h4>\n<h4>Odle subsequently told this newspaper to write to NICIL for a comment on the issue.<\/h4>\n<h4>Only last week, former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran had publicly stated that the sale of shares was a case of a lack of transparency. He stated that NICIL should be pressed to come clean on the matter.<\/h4>\n<h4>\u201cThe issue is one of transparency. The sale of the shares should have been advertised.\u00a0 All future agreements of this nature should also be tabled in the National Assembly for scrutiny by legislators and the public at large,\u201d Goolsarran contended.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concerns are mounting as to what really happened with the missing US$5 million for Government\u2019s GT&amp;T shares, as responsibility for the disclosure of a report on the findings continues to shift from person to person. Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, in a brief telephone interview from New York, questioned why the report has not yet been made public, stating that \u201cit is clear as day that either NICIL [National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited] or (Joseph) Harmon can release the findings\u201d. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why they don\u2019t release the information,\u201d he&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":36837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jagdeo-4.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36839,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36832\/revisions\/36839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}