The Government of Guyana (GoG) has made several requests to the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) for documents pertaining to land transfers and disposal of assets during the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) five years in office. Those documents have not been forthcoming, says Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo.
“The president had a meeting – I was in that meeting [and] the Attorney-General too – and we asked for several pieces of information [and] a lot of them have not been produced. We asked for the land issues – you know that on the campaign trail we made it very clear that we want to see who bought these lands; at what price; and what procurement method was used. And so, we are still not in receipt in all of them…They’ve selectively submitted some of these documents,” Jagdeo said during a press conference today at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), Greater Georgetown.
Jagdeo promised that these documents will be released to the public when the government acquires them.
“We’ve made a commitment to the public that we will release all of this…We have seen evidence of properties vested; large amounts of land vested in individuals and companies’ names although they have not paid…The public will get a list of that,” Jagdeo said.
He added that the government has also requested the documents that detail the transfer of assets of closed sugar estates to NICIL, and a list of all the assets that were disposed of by the entity.
Jagdeo noted that particulars were also requested for the disposal of houses that are sitting on estate lands.
The Vice President was quick to point out that NICIL has not had an audit in the last five years under the former government. The last audit was in 2014.
