Global Witness’ anti-corruption credentials impeccable 

…nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Global Witness, an internationally recognised Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that has received awards and international acclaim for its relentless fight against corruption and exploitation, recently published a report in which it was critical of the Guyana Government’s handling of the oil sector.

According to a senior civil society member, the default response of supporters of the Government has been to attack the messenger rather than deal with the message. He reminded that long before Guyana renegotiated its oil contract in 2016, Global Witness had carved out a formidable international reputation as a watchdog.
Global Witness was nominated for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 2003— after some of its most aggressive undercover work exposing injustice in Cambodia, where it investigated the illicit timber trade as well as its work in exposing the notorious blood diamond trade in Angola. Both campaigns were led by British anti-corruption activist Charmian Penelope Gooch.
Its campaign in Cambodia in 1995 saw Gooch and her team going undercover as timber buyers to study the trade, which was a violation of a United Nations ban. According to the documentation of their time in the logging camps, there were times when Gooch and her team were in personal danger. Nevertheless, they persevered to produce a report titled Forest, Famine, and War – The Key to Cambodia’s Future.

In the case of Angola, Gooch and her team investigated how blood diamonds were being used to fuel a decade-long civil war that resulted in millions of deaths and refugees. Their work played a major role in pushing for more transparency in the trade and has been credited for inspiring parts of the 2006 film Blood Diamond— which received several Oscar nominations.
Global Witness’ collaboration with local groups calling for justice after the 2016 assassination of Honduran environmental activist and Indigenous leader Berta Isabel Flores has also been credited with the arrests of some of the perpetrators.
Global Witness itself has produced extensive research shining a spotlight on the killings of environmental activists around the world, including its 2016 report Defenders of the Earth and 2019’s Enemies of the State. In many cases, these murders have been tied with corporate interests.
Prior to oil companies Royal Dutch Shell Plc (better known as simply Shell) and Eni SpA being taken to court in Italy on corruption-related allegations for its acquisition of a large oil field off the coast of Nigeria, Global Witness was one of several whistle-blowers who published reports highlighting the fact that a number of public officials ended up pocketing millions from the money Shell paid the Government.

Signed away
Global Witness’ Signed Away report on Guyana’s 2016 renegotiated contract with ExxonMobil came after months of investigations and interfacing with various officials. While it found no evidence of corruption on the part of any Government officials, it urged a probe in the face of the Government’s lacklustre negotiation and failure to adequately represent Guyana.
The entire process, from when negotiations began in early April, concluded with a signed deal on June 27. The Watchdog included estimates it garnered from Open Oil, an international agency that provides financial analysis and advice on natural resource, which indicated that Guyana may have missed out on US$55 billion.
Open Oil itself came out in defence of its estimates, which have been attacked by the Government and its supporters. According to Open Oil, its numbers cannot only stand up to scrutiny but they invited critique or amendments of the figures and model before they were published. The company noted that no one, including the Government, provided any substantial criticisms of the data or model.
“Our model projected the revenues Exxon’s Stabroek licence would produce until 2056, and some have stated that projections like this are speculative, or arbitrary. Of course, our model’s estimates are speculative in the sense of not being empirical fact – all forward-looking estimates are. But they are not somehow more speculative than anyone else’s,” Open Oil stated.