Many people have thought of the perfect heist. Not everyone has the chutzpah to really try it. In the Agriculture Bank Heist in China, a banker stole a few million dollars and thought if he bought lottery tickets, he could win and put back the money. It worked the first time, but not the second and third time and he got caught stealing over US$7 million. In the Great Brink Heist, 11 men made copies of keys and entered the bank’s vault and stole US$3 million. Their plan was to stash the money for six years until the Statute of Limitations ended before they started to use the money. Some got greedy and started to kill off the others, until they were caught. In the 1963 Great Train Heist, 15 crooks stopped a postal train and got away with US$41 million. It took a while, but 13 of them were caught. To this day the other two are at large. When I think of the US$18 million oil bonus in Guyana and the on and off mystery, I think of those people who had the chutzpah to think they could create the perfect heist.
The Guyanese people are still largely in the dark about the signing of the contract and the bonus that was part of the signing. Information comes forward in small pieces – drip, drip, drip. Each time we get a little more information, it is not because the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government is forthcoming, rather it is because we drag another piece of information out of them. Each time that information is dragged out of them, we cannot be certain they are telling the truth. Each time a minister or the president talks about the signing bonus, each time that person contradicts something another one of them said. The Cabinet has been all over the map when any member speaks about the US$18 million oil bonus. Why?
The APNU/AFC created a US$18 million mystery and as the mystery got exposed, a little at a time, we get the uneasy feeling that someone had sinister plans for the US18 million oil bonus. We get the distinct impression that had we not exposed them, the US$18 million would have been a heist. Why the secrecy? Why the various misinformation and lies? Misinformation and lies are indispensable elements in a strategy to misdirect people, to get people off the trail. In this case, therefore, can we conclude that there was this nefarious plan to subject the $US18 million oil bonus to a heist? Maybe, after all, these APNU/AFC dullards really believe and had the chutzpah to think of the perfect heist.
All oil production contracts around the world have had a signing bonus. When some of us initially raise the possibility that Guyana received a signing bonus, we did not really know that. We simply assumed that Guyana must have received one since this has been the standard practice around the world. When Christopher Ram in late 2017 revealed his sources told him Guyana received US$20 million in July 2016, APNU/AFC through senior spokespersons like Trotman, Jordan, Greenidge and Harmon denied Guyana received a signing bonus. When confronted towards the end of 2017 with a paper trail to prove Guyana received at least US$18 million, they were forced to admit the truth.
They then took the citizens on a merry-go-around before admitting that the US$18 million was sitting in a special secret account at the Bank of Guyana. One of them in the last couple of weeks then informed us that the US$18 million was transferred to the Consolidated Fund, another said it was still in the Bank of Guyana and yet another one said it was used to pay the legal fees for the ICJ. But political commentator, Ramon Gaskin, challenged them because he perused the Bank of Guyana reports and there is no indication of the US$18 million.
This week Jordan told us that, in fact, the money has been sitting secretly in a foreign bank to earn interest. Is this the truth? Why is information given to us in drips and drabs and only when information leaks from an outside source? This is an asset that belongs to the people, not the APNU/AFC. APNU/AFC for this period has the responsibility to manage these resources for the people. Yet we were never told that this money was paid to and it was only confirmed by APNU/AFC some 18 months after the fact. We were told just in the last two weeks contradicting stories – the money was in the Bank of Guyana, in the Consolidated Fund and used to pay legal fees for the ICJ. We have been subjected to the $US18 million oil bonus mystery story, as if we are children. What is the motivation? Is it that some in APNU/AFC had the chutzpah to plan a perfect heist?
