Dear Editor,
Evidently, Stabroek News colluded with GHK Lall to sanitize my essay which examined the audit reports of the Guyana Gold Board (GGB) under GHK Lall’s tenure as Chairman of the GGB’s Board of Directors. GHK Lall then conveniently responded to the sterilized version of my essay of which the original version revealed some damning findings. As such, I wish to devote this response to GHK Lall’s deceitful response that was published in the Stabroek News edition of September 8th, 2023.
GHK Lall claimed that he inherited the substantial increases in the administrative expenses which was continuously discussed at the Board level. This is blatantly false. The facts are that GHK Lall presided as the Chairman of the Board for the years 2017-2019.
The administrative expenses of the GGB in 2016, the year before he was appointed, was $293 million (this is what he inherited). By the time he left in 2019, administrative expenses increased to $413 million in 2019, representing a cumulative increase of $120 million or 41%―that is, nearly 4-times the level of increase recorded for the period 2011-2014.
More importantly, I should point out that within 24 hours, GHK Lall issued three pieces of responses to my essay which exposed him, none of which dealt with the substantive matters highlighted. For example, the below audit findings remained unaddressed in his responses, which he is obligated to the Guyanese taxpayers to offer plausible explanations.
i) What were the items under the “other expense” line item that accounted for the massive increase from $7.5 million in 2014 to $63 million by the end of 2019, an increase of 740%?
ii) The Guyana Gold Board acquired assets totaling $49.3 million as shown in the financial statements. Of this amount, the sum of $8.145 million for the purchase of generator set of $7.665 million and the supply and installation of CCTV cameras of $480k respectively. The Board was experiencing significant delays with the contractor in the completion of and handing over of the mercury abatement system with 50% of the amount due paid. To this end, there was no contract between the contractor and GGB, why was there no contract?
iii) Why was the due diligence procedure not invoked pursuant to the Guyana Gold Board Act for the issuance of and renewal of Gold Dealers licenses?
iv) Did he recover the $10.4 million paid to KNA construction? Was the building ever constructed at Liliendaal?
v) Why did he disregard the General Manager’s objection to the contract sum which was exorbitant of $60 million to Axis Guyana Inc.? Why did GHK Lall insisted for the payments to be made, and the GGB received no value for money in return according to the auditors? The audit report stated that the GGB could not produce anything to show the benefits derived.
vi) Why did GHK Lall facilitate Axis Guyana Inc. to breach Guyana’s tax laws?
If GHK Lall’s integrity is intact as he claimed, he should have no difficulty providing answers to the above.
Yours respectfully,
Joel Bhagwandin
