Chief Executive Officer of the State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU) Major (rtd) Aubrey Heath-Retemyer says that with billions of dollars in state assets stolen annually under the previous administration, the public must recognize that it will be a costly venture to pursue the guilty parties.
“The country must understand that the government will have to undertake the cost of hiring proper lawyers to help us prepare these cases so that we have a strong chance of bringing these people to justice,” Heath-Retemyer told the Sunday Stabroek during an interview last week.
He argued for the government’s need to ensure it has a strong legal team to recover stolen assets particularly in light of the head start that perpetrators have had.
The biggest area being looked at by the unit is the misappropriation of money, he said, while adding that the PPP/C was in office for 23 years and a number of offices and agencies had been compromised. “This is not witch hunting. This is common sense. Nobody that was prepared to stand up to the last administration would have survived,” he said, while adding that a lot of corrupt deals were allowed to go unchecked and unreported.
“When people steal government money, they don’t keep it where with one flick of a page or a click of the computer mouse you can find it. It is layers and that is why money laundering is such a problem when you have people who steal government money. Some of it would stay in the country, a lot of it would be banked in other safe havens around the world,” he explained.
Noting that these types of thefts are designed to present obscurity rather than transparency, he said that the unit is already in discussions with international agencies that would collaborate with SARU once it is properly constituted. “Contrary to what the opposition is saying, there is money out there. It is just a matter of the number of years’ lead time that people had to layer it,” he said.
According to Heath-Retemyer, there is evidence to show that dating back to 2008, the country was losing about $300 billion a year, which is an estimate that international organizations believes is low.
The estimates by SARU of money stolen under PPP/C administrations have been queried by analysts and commentators.
“I don’t want to alarm anybody, but we are talking about a lot of money. If you’re losing $300 billion a year, if you multiply it by six or eight years…,” he reasoned, while stressing that though all of that money may not be retrievable, it is felt that the unit is in a position and has the ability to “go after substantial amounts.”
However, he said that there are challenges, including limited funds which are provided by the Ministry of Presidency. He said that he doesn’t believe that the public understands the level of tediousness that is required to prove cases. “It goes without saying that people who have pilfered government money can afford to hire the best lawyers,” he stressed, while adding that as a result the unit will have to get “legal heavyweights.”
Heath-Retemyer noted too that specialists are also integral to the proper functioning of the unit, including financial analysts, forensic accountants and investigators, all of whom will make a team so that “when we are working on a case, we have the best skills and the best advice.”
He said that many of the perpetrators have calculated that the will may not be there to go after them. Asked how he reached such a conclusion, Heath-Reteymer said, “I think that they know it is extremely tedious and the quantities that they stole are in some cases mind boggling.”
Noting that after taking office, government found massive corruption and other evidence of wrongdoing, Heath-Retemyer stressed that “these are not just vain words, this information is credible because you can look at a number of other sources and confirm.”
He said that the unit, upon its establishment, sought to “put our local house in order. That is to check within the systems what we could fix.” Noting that the unit’s mission is “to help reduce corruption, increase transparency within the government agencies and to utilize all legal means in order to retrieve stolen national wealth,” Heath-Retemyer went on to explain that corruption prior to May, 2015, resulted in Guyana losing because of procurement fraud, which cost between $28 billion and $35 billion a year, illicit capital flight in the sum of about $90 billion a year, and the underground economy, which cost around $188 billion a year. “These are not figures that we just concocted,” he stressed, while adding that after the unit started off with looking at the “basic things,” it later narrowed its focus to four areas, including matters involving money.
He said that vehicles and movable assets were looked at and it was recognized that “there was a mass of confusion within ministries.” He said that there was a row over who had what, vehicles were unaccounted for and worst of all there was no paper trail. He said that SARU systematically tried to work with various agencies and ministries.
He said that last year 54 agencies were looked at. “That was not just taking the inventory (or) the words of the people who run those agencies. We have actually physically sent people to count and check the vehicles,” he informed, while adding that from those checks it was determined what vehicles were serviceable and what should be gotten rid of.
He said that this physical check did not pertain only to the agencies but work was also done in the regions. He said that all the regions, except Region One, were visited last year. In the case of Region One, he said that the unit has information but was unable to visit.
Government buildings are also a focus of the unit. “Lots of government buildings were not properly utilized,” he said, while noting that in the regions it was usual for the unit to find the relatives of the original occupants living in a government building after that person would have either left the job or been reassigned to another location. “This is at the expense of other persons entitled to them so the government either had to go rent a place or the person… rented and they (the government) give you back your money or something but those things were common occurrences, so at least we have highlighted them,” he said.
According to Heath-Retemyer, the unit is working along with the regions to send out letters to demand that people give up the government buildings that they occupy. He said that the unit is also tabulating the number of buildings that have gone up around the city. “The opposition jumps up and screams that we are after business people. It’s nonsense. The fact is there is money laundering taking place in this country…and it is not hard to recognize that there are a number of buildings in this country, one floor occupied, two or three unoccupied and as far as we know there are no mortgages,” he said. He stressed that the unit is committed to making sure that the nation is not “held hostage by a number of illegal practices which we have to account for.” He said too that several government buildings have been sold to several individuals.
According to Heath-Reteymer land is another area of focus. While explaining that this is a big issue, he singled out land at Liliendaal. He said that a group came to Guyana from Trinidad and met with GuySuCo and this meeting resulted in an offer which would have seen GuySuCo raking in US$25 million once the lands were developed. “Lands would just be developed. No questions asked (and) Guyana gets US$25 million,” he said, while adding that this deal was scrapped and the land was parceled and sold at prices way below the true value. Other parcels at other locations were also sold below market value, he said.
According to the CEO, they realized early on that a number of agencies had to account for land in Guyana—the Central Housing and Planning Authority, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, GuySuCo, the Forestry Commission and the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary/ Agricultural Development Association. “We are still not where we want to be but we were able to bring some semblance of order,” he stressed.
