Law needed for unexplained wealth
–SARA officials
The State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) in 2019 will be pushing for legislation and for there to be more focus on unexplained wealth, as well as the creation of a subdivision that will deal only with oil-related matters, according to its Director, Professor Clive Thomas.
Thomas, along with Deputy Director Aubrey Heath-Retmeyer, believes that these two issues are too important to ignore.
During an interview with Stabroek News last week, the two officials, among other things, outlined their plans for the new year.
Thomas emphasised that for next year, the agency would like to focus on the modification of the law. “We feel that the country needs legislation …it may be under SARA or SOCU, we don’t know, but a new institution to deal with unexplained wealth. This will be something separate from the agency,” he informed.
According to the Director, the burden should be put on those who have wealth to explain where they have gotten it from. “Right now, what we have to do is to prove how they accumulated this wealth but in other countries like US and Canada, there is a category called unexplained wealth…so if you are unbelievably wealthy (and) you have no source or visible source of income, you have to explain how is it that you accumulated this wealth,” he stressed.
Asked what has prompted this line of thinking, HeathRetmeyer explained that the agency has taken note of the big buildings being constructed. “…from practice, the agency is seeing things going up all over this country and …while we don’t want to accuse anybody, people have written to the Director and other agencies stating that they know that this man don’t have any particular job…,” he said. Thomas later stressed that the agency is actively looking at this and will be pushing for it in the new year.
During an interview in March, Thomas had pointed out that the agency was preparing to play its role in safeguarding the state’s property when oil production begins. He had also observed that the industry traditionally brings “illegality and corruption.”
He told Stabroek News during the recent interview that the agency wants to establish a department or section that deals primarily with the oil industry. “…you know all the complaints we are getting and the discussions in the press… We as an agency, are well-positioned to investigate such matters so we are hoping that somewhere down the line, maybe another year or so, we can develop that,” Thomas said.
He asserted that oil has become an important sector because of the amount of state assets that would be involved, particularly given that “we own the industry and Exxon is the contractor so that we would have to protect the national property as much as we can.”
According to Thomas, “we (SARA) hope we will be set to transition to some focus on the oil industry because we have none at the moment and that is going to begin in 2020. Guyana’s largest state asset and we have to remember that many people don’t recognise it, we own the industry,” he said.
He stressed too that it is hoped that 2019 will be a very active year in terms of cases being pursued. “We hope to advance what we discussed at the beginning ...that is the court pursuit,” he said, before singling out gold smuggling which accounts for billions of dollars in lost state revenue.
Thomas said too that SARA hopes to consolidate relationships with the other agencies with which work is being done and that there will be continued support in 2019. These agencies, he said, includes the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Financial Intelligence Unit.
“We recognise that the government faces a real risk of the country being declared a risky environment. A financial risky environment,” he said, before warning that Guyana stands to lose greatly if it does advance its efforts in areas such as money laundering and associated crimes.
In this regard, he said, SARA has been “throwing” in their lot in helping to bring about some sort of stability. He said that they have to examine other sectors identified in the National Risk Assessment, pointing out that money is often laundered through significant sectors in the economy such as motor vehicles and property dealerships, not just in Guyana but universally.