Due to my continued work highlighting grand thefts and forfeitures of billions of US dollars by our politicians past and present, of the oil wealth which belongs to the people of Guyana and which does not belong to the politicians and companies, there have been and will continue to be attempts to discredit my message by trying to discredit the messenger.
Firstly, please recall Mr Clement Smith whose letter on the 29th November 2018 stated that the SN editorial of November 26th “ignored journalistic ethics by including Jan Mangal’s unsubstantiated and unsourced claims about costs. The editorial repeatedly questions why the government did not “test” the US$4.4 billion budget associated with the Liza Phase 1 development plan.”
My response on the following day was clear, and I suspect by now most Guyanese know that the costs proposed by oil companies are usually inflated by 100’s of millions of US dollars, and therefore have to be audited by the Government. Some Guyanese also might have assumed by now that Mr Clement Smith is an advocate for ExxonMobil itself.
Secondly, please recall Mr Robin Singh whose letter on the 13th June 2019 stated that “we can certainly take a closer look at the actions of Dr. Jan Mangal who acted as adviser to the Government of Guyana during the Production Sharing Agreement negotiation period. Strangely, during that period, Dr. Mangal was an unknown man, he was not making public statements nor was he having much success impacting the negotiations”.
There is a reason why I was an unknown man in 2016, and that is because I did not start advising President Granger until March 2017. Mr Singh is trying to associate me with the 2016 contract for the Stabroek Block, a contract that I have consistently criticised as giving away 60 – 120 billion US dollars of our money for no reason. I did not become aware that the contract was signed until after I started advising President Granger, that is after March 2017. This was more than eight months after the contract was actually signed. It was ExxonMobil who told me the contract was signed, not the Government. President Granger himself seemed surprised that a new contract was already signed. We have to remember some of the Ministers responsible were playing down the whole issue, claiming that there was no new contract, and just some tweaks to the existing contract (which we know is a lie). None of the key Ministers wanted me advising President Granger and they vehemently disagreed with pretty much all of my recommendations (like my recommendations to publish the contract and disclose the signing bonus, etc, etc). They saw me as a threat to their schemes and incompetence.
Thirdly, please recall accusations, including by Mr Robin Singh on the 13th June 2019, that as an adviser to President Granger I somehow influenced ExxonMobil in its award of a contract in 2017 for a supply base in Guyana. This is incorrect. I had no influence, and no one in government or associated with Government should have any influence. Contracts that ExxonMobil signs with companies for services in Guyana and around the world, are business-to-business (B2B) contracts. Governments must not be involved in any way to influence the award of these contracts between companies, and if they are that is corruption. This may come as a shock to Mr Robin Singh and the current leadership cabal of the PPP, because when they were in Government they were widely accused of illegality in respect to major contracts.
Fourthly, there have been claims on social media that I am some sort of spy for Chevron and that I might be trying to get them into Guyana. This is incorrect. My work to stop the awarding of oil blocks by secret one-on-one negotiations (which defraud the country), and my advocacy for awarding blocks via transparent public auctions (which maximise value to the country), was a direct challenge to some supporters and members of the current administration who were entertaining the idea of a secret award of Block C (one of the last remaining large blocks) to Chevron or other companies.
So in summary, it is no surprise that elements from both of the morally decaying and parasitic large political parties, as well as from the international resource exploiters, are challenged by my ideas, and are attempting to discredit the messenger because they feel defenceless against the message.
Please note that Mr Robin Singh only started his accusations after my long efforts to disclose the grand fraud of the Canje and Kaieteur Blocks became international news, and after SARA took an interest in the fraud. Was this because I challenged his PPP friends who awarded these two oil blocks to non-entities?
Please note that even though I am critical of many high-ranking officials in the current Government, I saw for myself how President Granger took numerous positive actions with respect to oil. Also, I am still convinced that the current leadership cabal of the main opposition are a tremendous threat, and the biggest threat, to our future with oil.
Yours faithfully,
Jan Mangal
See original here: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2019/opinion/letters/06/22/my-work-is-to-highlight-grand-theft-of-the-peoples-wealth-main-opposition-poses-biggest-threat-to-oil-future/