…Eric Phillips clears air on connection with ABR

STATE Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) Executive, Eric Phillips has stated that the recent attempt by Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo and the Kaieteur News to paint the ongoing oil blocks investigation as compromised has failed for a lack of merit.

Just recently, the newspaper in question broke the news that Phillips was one of the beneficial owners of the company African Business Roundtable Oil and Gas Exploration (ABR O&G) which applied for oil blocks in 2016.

This caused speculations as Phillips is part of SARA’s team probing the awarding of oil blocks offshore Guyana to “junior” companies by the former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) just before it demitted office in 2015.

However, Phillips, on Monday stated that he was not a member of SARA when the application was made by ABR O&G; that he joined SARA in May 2017 and that fact that the newspaper even made the weak connection is suspicious.

Nonetheless, when the newspaper broke the news the claims were quickly picked up by the Jagdeo-led PPP which rallied efforts to label the investigation as compromised. “Yes, I was a member of the ABR group that applied but was not the lead person involved in the application and had very little to do with it since December 2016. My appointment with SARA was May 2017 and so I can only deduce that Kaieteur News was purposefully creating the ‘perception’ of ‘conflict’ when there is no substance to the claim,” Phillips said in a statement to the media.

He added: “At the time of my commission to be part of the team investigating the corrupt awarding of the two blocks, I was no longer an active member of the ABR. Hence the only conflict of interest is at the level of perception not in substance.”

In comparison, he stated that Jagdeo’s “using age-old political trickery” will not take away from the fact that the oil blocks give away under the former Administration over just a 6-week period was worth “hundreds of billions of dollars”.

He criticised the Opposition Party for calling on the current government to go into a “caretaker” mode which sees them awarding no contracts when they did worse than the opposite in years past.

“Note that these blocks were awarded secretly when there was no parliamentary oversight because parliament had been prorogued since November 10, 2014, with elections held on May11, 2015. Of course the ‘duplicitous’ PPP former administration has been arguing since December 21, 2018 that no major decisions of this type should be made during a period close to an election,” the SARA Executive highlighted.

Meanwhile, he slammed the Kaieteur News for “reckless disengagement of fact-checking” in singling him out as being involved in some form of conflict interest with no true evidence that points to such.

Phillips questioned whether the newspaper created a “magnificent media masquerade” over the matter in attempt to protect those who have stakes in oil blocks.

He also questioned the reason behind linkages made to him being the Director of a fishing company, a pharmaceutical company and a logistics company to ABR’s application for the oil block prior to the ongoing investigation.

“Surely the Kaieteur News would know that Dr. Clive Thomas [SARA’s Head] would have never entrusted me with such an investigation if I was the owner of an oil block. By the way, none of the companies I am on as a Director — be it the logistics company or the fishing company etcetera— are the recipients of any grants or assistance from the government of Guyana,” Phillips cleared the air.

Meanwhile, he pointed out that the previous 10 oil blocks were awarded by the PPP to “non-African Guyanese” with Director of the Mid-Atlantic Oil and Gas Inc., Edris Dookie receiving up to 6 blocks.

The SARA Executive indicated that this includes one each in 2012 and 2013 while Dookie was at CGX Inc. and in 2015 when he was secretly given the Canje block just prior to the elections.

Providing a comparison, Phillips stated that the members of ABR comprised of “established African Guyanese businessmen and businesswomen” who applied for the two remaining oil blocks, a fishing license and more.

“An application was made in October 2016 by a group of individuals whom all belong to the African Business Roundtable whose main goal was to ensure that the historical and continual economic genocide of African Guyanese which took place under the PPP is addressed,” Phillips stated.

“Under the former PPP regime, these African Guyanese entrepreneurs had long been denied equal access in every sector of the Guyanese economy due to systematic, institutionalized racial marginalization and discrimination.”

LAND
Added to this, Jagdeo also claimed recently that the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GLSC) indiscriminately disbursed some 20, 000 acres of leased land to persons close to the current administration.

He named Phillips amongst several others.
He stated that the SARA Executive has 1000 acres in the Essequibo River and another 1000 acres in the Demerara River although GLSC Head, Trevor Benn described the issuances as applications pending since the days of the PPP.

Phillips again questioned the motive of the Kaieteur News to zero in on his legitimate acquisition of land when other pressing matters of corruption by the PPP are being swept beneath the carpet.

Some of these he claimed were an Indian Company which received 1M acres land and a Brazilian miner fingered in the Panama Papers who received a lease and 18 licenses for 2.2M acres of land.

He questioned the presence of the newspaper when the PPP government gave another Indian company, Blue Wave Inc., 60,000 hectares of land at G$2500 per hectare for 199 years and 900,000 acres of mining lands to mainly one family.

He also listed the $20B found “passing through” the bank account of former Permanent Secretary of Office of the President under the PPP, Omar Shariff and land freely given out by the Mahaica-Mahaicony- Abary (MMA) to some 289 East Indians prior to 2015.

“Why is there such a magnificent masquerade of racism when I, Eric Phillips, legitimately, with a bankable business plan, and an overseas investor, apply for agricultural land?” he asked.

The SARA Executive claimed that African Guyanese who died to build Guyana have been done an injustice by the PPP being robbed for years of the opportunity to benefit from the nation’s wealth

“Is Jagdeo and the PPP out rightly saying that African Guyanese are not supposed to be investors or to own businesses or to own oil blocks or banks or mining concessions, or agricultural lands…just like they claimed that we were not qualified to hold Ambassadorial posts?” Phillips questioned.

“Jagdeo is a man that oversaw the ethnic cleansing of over 400 African Guyanese citizens and a man that gave away our sovereignty to drug lords, gold smugglers and killers; a man that wanted to give away our land to Venezuela and therefore our oil and is bent on creating a race war in Guyana.”