…Ministry of Natural Resources dismisses Newsroom report on signing bonus as mischievous and reckless

THE US$18M signing bonus received from US oil giant ExxonMobil in 2016 will be placed in the Consolidated Fund at an appropriate time, said Minister of State Joseph Harmon on Thursday, hours before the Ministry of Natural Resources demanded a retraction from a news site on the very issue.

Government had disclosed last year that the signing bonus was placed into an Escrow Account at the Bank of Guyana.
Harmon was at the time responding to questions during his post-Cabinet press briefing held at the Ministry of the Presidency. He said the signing bonus represents money that belongs to Guyana and will not be used to pay anyone unless deposited into the Consolidated Fund.
“That bonus, wherever it is, will be placed into the Consolidated Fund and it is from that fund that any team whatsoever would be paid; whether they work before or after, it is from the Consolidated Fund these funds will come from.”

Guyana on Thursday submitted its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) requesting the Court to confirm the legal validity and binding effect of the 1899 Arbitral Award regarding the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela.

In December, Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman announced that of the US$18M signing bonus, US$15M would be utilised for the payment of legal and associated fees. However, Thursday, his colleague Minister Harmon made it clear that once the money is placed into the Fund, then government would have to make applications to the National Assembly for its approval of the identified sums to pay persons for their services.

“It is not some private account that you go and you draw down from…the sums are to be placed in the Consolidated Fund and it is from the Consolidated Fund that anybody that provides a service to the government will be paid,” Harmon asserted.

Asked whether the move to have the money transferred to the Consolidated Fund is as a result of the Opposition People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) legal challenge to the money being placed in an Escrow Account as opposed to the Consolidated Fund, Harmon said, “No, it is not as a result of the PPP court action.”

“It is just prudent fiscal management. All sums of money under this administration… we don’t have any secret private funds anywhere. Anybody paid by this government, the sums come from the Consolidated Fund,” the Minister of State assured.

He noted that the Consolidated Fund is a consolidation of all funds owned by the government. “It is not a matter of the PPP going to court. They have no precedent where we have had monies outside of the Consolidated Fund and using it for any purposes like that.”

Asked when the money would be placed in the Consolidated Fund, Harmon said, “It is a matter of prudent fiscal management and it will be placed there at the appropriate time when the Minister of Finance recognises that it is the time for it to go.”

Last month, Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma had acknowledged that the law requires the government to place all relevant funds into the state’s account. Despite that, he insisted that there are several real issues being considered, given that the money received is needed for a major and urgent national issue.

Sharma was at the time responding to the Opposition’s decision to mount a legal challenge against the government for not placing the money into the Consolidated Fund. Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire in January ruled as flawed, an application by head of the Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc. (TIGI), Troy Thomas, for the High Court to order Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, to immediately deposit the US$18M signing bonus into the Consolidated Fund.

When the matter was called, Justice George-Wiltshire said the application was procedurally flawed and told Thomas’s lawyer, Christopher Ram, to withdraw it or she would strike it out. The application which was filed by Ram was seeking, among other things, an order from the court directing that the Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, account for the bonus in the amended estimates of revenues of the public sector for the years 2017 and 2018.

He also argued, according to the newspaper, that failure to do so is a violation of the constitution and the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA). The PPP’s court challenge filed by Attorney Anil Nandlall is along the same line.

President David Granger had made it clear that his administration acted legitimately by accepting the US$18M signing bonus from U.S. oil giant, ExxonMobil, and placing same into an escrow account at the Bank of Guyana. He said that the money was received to address national security matters. “I am the head of government, I am responsible, I am aware of it and it is a legitimate Government of Guyana exercise; and I am aware that it is [at] Bank of Guyana in Escrow; once it is an Escrow account, it means that it cannot be used for purposes for which it is not intended,” he said in response to questions on the issue.
The President maintained that there was nothing wrong or illegal done, stressing that “It is

a legitimate Government of Guyana practice and the money has not been dishonestly acquired and has not been used for purposes for which it is not intended.”
He explained that the money was received at a time he believes that was necessary, given “some national security implications.” “It is a legitimate exercise, it is to be used for certain matters which we perceive to be of national security interest and [at] that point in time it was the thing to do, so that we can have access in the event of a national security emergency,” he said.

Mischievous and Reckless
Meanwhile, Minister Trotman slammed a news article published by Newsroom yesterday captioned, “Trotman, Harmon differ on spending of signing bonus” and called for the news site to “retract and correct their misleading article.”

“Contrary to what is insinuated in the article, Minister of Natural Resources, Hon. Raphael Trotman at no time indicated to Newsroom or any other media, a position that differs to the one outlined by Minister of State, Hon. Joseph Harmon,” the release stated.

According to the release, Minister Trotman explained that once the juridical settlement to the Guyana-Venezuela controversy had qualified for the International Court of Justice, it would have triggered a process. “That process saw the Minister of Finance, Hon. Winston Jordan asking Cabinet by way of a Memorandum, to release the ExxonMobil Signing Bonus into the Consolidated Fund to make payments to the legal team representing Guyana,” the release pointed out.

The Ministry said that for Newsroom to insinuate “that there is a controversy regarding the spending of the Signing Bonus is mischievous and reckless, given the purpose for which the funds are intended.”