A MAN was arrested after he proved to be a fraudulent lobbyist, Vice-President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo said on Monday. The man reportedly claimed to be able to use connections with the government to get preferential treatment for companies.

Speaking at a press conference at the Office of the President, Dr. Jagdeo said that as the government prepares to request bids from companies for various projects, particularly in the oil and gas sector, it has been seeing an influx of local representatives liaising with companies to set up meetings with government officials.

However, many such persons are deceitful to the people for whom they seek special treatment, he said.

“A few months ago, I had cause to have someone arrested here in this building. Someone who met me in the [International Energy Conference and Expo], took a picture with me [then] went to a number of people and collected money from them. He said he had a close relation with me, I’ve never seen him in my life,” the Vice-President recalled.

He added: “At the conference, he asked to meet with me, so I said contact my secretary. He then showed up here with another person that he was conning, bringing to the meeting and he was arrested right here.”

The Vice-President warned companies about these individuals.

“This is going on; it has become almost like an industry now where people claiming they are representing companies and I don’t know what they are representing to these people,” said the Vice-President.

Dr. Jagdeo noted that the government has been seeing a suspicious increase of requests for meetings by persons as the government prepares to request proposals from the nine prequalified companies for the pipeline project for the Wales gas-to-shore project.

“A lot of the companies that are tendering, they have local representatives who are saying they have agreements to represent these companies and are trying to get these companies to meet with government officials. If any of these companies believe that meeting government officials would give them improved chances when the bids are evaluated they are wasting their money and their time. It’s a lobbying industry; we see it with this process an overload of persons calling to set up meetings,” the Vice-President said.

“We don’t want to meet with them. If local people are representing them to somehow get a preference here, the answer is no. We’ve seen this in other cases.”