Where is the previous $200M for legal fees? – Ram questions

In 2016, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge had admitted in the National Assembly under questioning from the parliamentary Opposition, that $200 million had been set aside to hire international lawyers for Guyana’s border controversy with Venezuela.
That sum was subsequently cleared, along with the rest of the budget. However, while Guyana is yet to go to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Government is now defending the hitherto secret existence of a larger sum of US$18 million with the very same explanation that the money is for Guyana’s legal fees.

Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram first blew the whistle that Government had collected millions in US dollars from ExxonMobil as a signing bonus for its renegotiated oil contract with Guyana. However, on Saturday, Ram in an interview with  Guyana Times  emphasised that Government must explain what it did with the first allocation for ‘legal fees’.
“And since Minister (of Foreign Affairs, Carl) Greenidge is so forthcoming in this matter, then he ought to be similarly forthcoming in explaining how the earlier sums have been expended,” Ram stated, during the interview.
On the matter of Government’s explanation for the signing bonus, Ram expressed disappointment. “It is a phenomenal amount …it amounts to five years of the entire legal profession’s fees in Guyana. Now the information for the defence of our case has already been accumulated since 1896.”
“And it has been repeated in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s and (onwards). The information is there, what would have to happen is there would have to be advocacy in front of the ICJ, if it is taken to the ICJ.”
In February 2016, Greenidge had revealed that the Government of Guyana set aside $200 million to retain international consultants to build a strong case against Venezuela in anticipation of the border controversy attracting the attention of the ICJ.
At the time, People’s Progressive Party/Civic Chief Whip and former Foreign Affairs Minister Gail Teixeira had questioned the $200 million placed under Line Item the heading ‘other’ in Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Development of Foreign Policy.
Teixeira had pointed out that in 2014, some $30 million was allocated under the Line Item but by 2015 it had jumped to $166.6 million. She had noted that only $76.4 million was utilised and as result, she queried why $200 million was being requested.
Responding to the enquiries, Greenidge explained that “the increase here is determined almost exclusively by the cost of retaining international lawyers to assist us in this exercise… together with the need to also retain lawyers and advisors locally.”

Border controversy
Relations between Guyana and Venezuela have worsened ever since oil giant ExxonMobil announced in 2015 that it had found oil in Guyana. Venezuela has staunchly been against oil exploration in Guyana’s Stabroek Block, where multiple oil deposits were found by ExxonMobil.
Venezuela’s National Assembly had approved an agreement to reject the oil exploration activities in March 2017.
In 2015, the Government of Guyana requested then UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, to take steps toward resolving the controversy. In 2016, as a consequence of a stalemate on the matter, the outgoing Ban Ki-moon agreed with his successor, António Guterres, to continue to use the Good Offices Process until the end of 2017 as a means of arriving at a settlement.
It is with that intention that Guterres appointed a representative of the United Nations Secretary General. With responsibility for the border controversy, Dag Halvor Nylander has been acting as an envoy to resolve the border controversary.
According to the mandate of the personal representative, “If, by the end of 2017, the Secretary General concludes that no significant progress has been made toward arriving at a full agreement for the solution of the controversy, he will choose the International Court of Justice as the next means of settlement, unless the Governments of Guyana and Venezuela jointly request that he refrain from doing so.”