By Sue-Ann Wayow
THE United National Congress (UNC) Opposition will be seeking a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to find out the accountability of almost $650 million spent by the National Gas Company (NGC).
On Tuesday, in a press release, the UNC repeated its call for an immediate forensic audit in what they refer to as “potentially criminal conduct and breach of fiduciary duty” by the Board of NGC.
“We need nothing less than an immediate forensic audit into this outrageous expenditure of what may total $650 million, according to some newspaper reports,” the UNC stated.
The UNC said that key personnel including Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, Energy Minister Stuart Young, former energy minister Conrad Enill, head of the NGC board Mark Loquan and others would have been informed either fully or partially that there would be no gas available for the Atlantic LNG Train One in 2021.
Reports indicated that they were informed of the situation in writing by BP and Shell, the majority shareholders of Train One, the UNC said
“Yet, they undertook to spend 100% of the costs to ostensibly keep Train One going, spending over half a billion of taxpayer dollars on contractors and other service providers, even though they knew or ought reasonably to have known it was going to shut down, according to information in the public domain. The NGC Board even asked the Government for an indemnification, because they fully well knew that there was the potential to be held civilly or criminally liable for fraud or other corrupt expenditure and for breach of fiduciary duty,” the UNC said.
The UNC said that NGC had a fiduciary duty to its shareholders, to ensure that all monies under its control were properly spent and that the $650 million of public, taxpayer’s monies appeared to be improperly spent.
“While the forensic investigation proceeds, all suspects from Rowley to Stuart Young to Mark Loquan and the entire NGC Board must step down immediately,” the UNC added.
On Saturday, Dr Rowley at a press conference said the restructuring of Train One of which the Government owns 10%, was one of the major discussions with BP officials in London last week.
Dr Rowley said, “I think we could now conclude that the gas is not there as BP has not been successful. However, we discussed BP moving forward in terms of investing and continuing to drill to find more gas.”
He said a decision will be taken in 2022 on Train One.
