Said NICIL must go, cayse it bad fuh Guyana.  It has been 6 long friggin months

NICIL is a ‘blood sucking zombie’ that must be banished –Presidential Advisor

By Kiana Wilburg
Presidential Advisor on Sustainable Development, Dr. Clive Thomas, is in total agreement with having the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) liquidated as recommended by a forensic audit

Presidential Advisor on Sustainable Development, Dr. Clive Thomas

report on the entity.
He said that for such a company to continue in its current state, would represent one of the greatest sins against the people who are looking forward daily for transparency and accountability.
The economist said, “NICIL needs to be shut down. If you have it where it is, with its finances not streamlined into the Consolidated Fund, then it will still hold the potential to be a parallel treasury regardless of the type of government you have. The recommendation to have it closed is geared towards removing that situation and I am for it.”
With regard to comments from Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, that NICIL is necessary and government ought to retain it in its original state, Thomas said, “I can’t be upset with him for holding that position. It proves that nothing has changed when it comes to the PPP.
“If he holds that position which is reflective of his contaminated mindset then it is all the more reason for us to understand why it was necessary for us to get them out of office.”
“I have said this before and I will say it again, NICIL served the corrupt and selfish interests of the PPP era. It did not help the healthy development of the nation. But Jagdeo keeps saying that NICIL, given what we know it to be, has been part and parcel of our successes as a nation. In fact, it inhibited it and was at the centre of some of the crassest and corrupt acts committed against our people.”
The Presidential advisor said that assets were disposed of in the most unimaginable ways and investments were made recklessly. This was never the original intention for NICIL. The addition of the Privatisation Unit changed its function.
He added, “There is no doubt that NICIL will go down in history as the country’s blood sucking zombie. It is what it is today because it was created to be so by the PPP and I believe that it needs to be banished. I am all for it closing down.”
At his most recent press conference, the Opposition Leader was asked whether he agrees with the recommendation to have NICIL liquidated and made into a small department under the Finance Ministry.

Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo

He unequivocally dismissed the notion. Jagdeo said, “I think that the government needs to probably keep NICIL. You will see that all of the audited reports of the company gave it a clean bill of health. I believe that when you would have seen the so-called forensic audit and the response by NICIL, you would also conclude that NICIL played a very useful role in Guyana’s development and it acted in transparent manner.”
Jagdeo claimed that NICIL was “demonized” by private vendetta by some newspapers and by the then political opposition.
“Almost every single day there would be some fabrication of a story on NICIL in the papers. They portrayed it as being corrupt. The government, when it was in opposition, made a big issue about closing NICIL down and said that NICIL is not necessary. They find themselves today in a dilemma. Either they admit that they were wrong and that they do need to keep NICIL or close it and fulfill the promise to the people to do so,” expressed the former President.
It has been over one month since the NICIL report has been completed. But Cabinet is yet to see it.  As a result, it has not been able to grant its blessings on the way forward with NICIL. The same situation is also taking place for various audit reports which have been completed for a longer period.
Since the launch of a forensic audit into the operations of NICIL, several glaring breaches of the country’s financial regulations have been unearthed.
Not only has the report on the forensic audit implicated the Company’s CEO, Winston Brassington, in committing some of those acts, but it has also named former Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh; former Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon; other former members of the NICIL Board as well as former Cabinet Ministers and officials.
Dr. Singh served as the Chairman of the Unit while Dr. Luncheon served as a Director. The audit, Kaieteur News understands, categorically states that there was misuse of public moneys by those office holders.
It said, too, that they played an important role in one way or the other in providing the conditions necessary for some of the “unimaginable scales of corruption” to take place on the NICIL platform.
Junior Finance Minister, Jaipaul Sharma, had confirmed that the report on the forensic audit speaks to three sections of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FM&AA) 2003.
He had said that the audit justifies holding Dr. Singh and other members liable for misuse of public monies. Section 48 of the FM&AA says, “A Minister or official shall not in any manner misuse, misapply, or improperly dispose of public moneys.”
Section 85, he said, also outlines what can be deemed as the liability of an official. That section of the Act says that an official who falsifies any account, statement, receipt or other record issued or kept for the purposes of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, the Regulations, the Finance Circulars or any other instrument made under the Act;  conspires or colludes with any other person to defraud the State or make opportunity for any person to defraud the State; or knowingly permits any other person to contravene any provision of this Act, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable on conviction to a fine of $2 million and to imprisonment for three years.
The report also speaks to the liability for loss of public moneys at NICIL as it refers to Section 49 of the Act, which says that if ‘a loss of public monies should occur and, at the time of that loss, a Minister or official has caused or contributed to that loss through misconduct or through deliberate or serious disregard of reasonable standards of care, that Minister or official shall be personally liable to the Government for the amount of the loss.
Minister Sharma had confirmed that there were various cases of public loss of monies at NICIL by certain officials. He said that government has a responsibility to respect and follow through on the recommendations of strict penalties against those implicated.
Sharma had said, “NICIL was being run in a haphazard way. It made dangerous decisions that cost the company millions of dollars in losses. It placed the then government in a bad place. NICIL really was operating as the PPP’s greatest force in making corrupt acts realized. The more the forensic auditor keeps digging, the more dirt he finds on NICIL and how it operated.”
With a new Board and Chairman in place, the government called on Brassington to explain NICIL’s investments into all projects over the years. He was also expected to state, honestly, the position of the company’s assets.