–  recovery of over $25B in taxes remains in limbo

It is now two weeks since Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo offered the Government of Guyana assistance in recouping over $25 billion in taxes owed by 10 companies to the State coffers and there was still no sign from the new Administration of its willingness to accept the offer. With the gargantuan quantum of monies owing as unpaid taxes, it has to be concluded that these are companies with proportionate mega revenues.

Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo

Jagdeo had made the offer while speaking at a press conference on September 9 following complaints from the new Attorney General Basil Williams that he was unable to properly acquaint himself with the ongoing matters because of the lack of all of the files.

Although the Opposition Leader rejected the AG’s excuse, he said that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) was willing to make former Attorney General Anil Nandlall available to work with the Government to offer “institutional knowledge” about the ongoing tax cases in order to put it on firm footing to be able to successful fight the cases.

“We will share all of the institutional memory that we have about those tax cases, because we don’t want the Government to lose those tax cases based on bad legal representation, because it will cause the treasury billions of dollars and us as taxpayers – people of this country. We want to share things with them, we want to work with them on this,” he had outlined.

When contacted on Wednesday, Jagdeo said that no one from the Government had contacted the Party or him directly to accept the offer.

He maintained that the PPP has no interest in simply going after businesses in general and was unwilling to be part of any crusade to target businesses unfairly.

“We merely wanted to ensure that the Government had all of the information it needed to prosecute the small amount of cases that we had initiated action against,” Jagdeo said.

In the meantime, former Attorney General Nandlall reiterated that he remained ready and willing to assist if necessary. “All of the information needed at the Government is at its disposal, but I am available as the Opposition Leader said to lend assistance,” Nandlall reassured the Guyana Times Newspaper.