Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of “hid­ing and duck­ing” af­ter a high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee meet­ing card­ed for yes­ter­day to re­view the de­tails sur­round­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port in­to a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment of rev­enue in the 2023 pub­lic fi­nan­cial state­ments was sud­den­ly post­poned. 

Short­ly af­ter 9.30 yes­ter­day morn­ing, Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass and mem­bers of her de­part­ment ar­rived at the Par­lia­ment’s J Hamil­ton Mau­rice meet­ing room for the pub­lic event, which was sched­uled to be­gin at 10.30 am. 

It was ex­pect­ed that mem­bers of the com­mit­tee, which in­clud­ed five gov­ern­ment mem­bers and two op­po­si­tion mem­bers chaired by Oropouche West Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dave Tan­coo, were ex­pect­ed to ex­am­ine the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s find­ings on gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and a con­tro­ver­sial $2.6 bil­lion dol­lar 2023 rev­enue dis­crep­an­cy.

How­ev­er, it was post­poned when, around 11.15 am, a par­lia­ment of­fi­cial en­tered the lob­by area and no­ti­fied Ram­dass. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and her team, which com­prised As­sis­tant Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Shi­va Sinanan, Se­nior Le­gal Of­fi­cer Ani­ta Man­gra, Act­ing Au­dit Ex­ec­u­tive II Mar­cia Val­ley-Mor­ris and Au­dit Ex­ec­u­tive I Bren­da Rag­bir, De Jean ap­peared shocked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the post­pone­ment ap­peared to be an at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to side­step the pub­lic ven­ti­la­tion of the con­tentious mat­ter. Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged that if elect­ed in­to of­fice, her gov­ern­ment would en­sure full trans­paren­cy in the mat­ter. 

She said, “The Gov­ern­ment is hid­ing again, but I re­mem­ber fa­mous words in the Par­lia­ment: ‘They could run, but they will not es­cape.’”

“We will not let the mater rest. Al­most 3 bil­lion dol­lars can­not be ac­count­ed for—where the mon­ey gone? The Gov­ern­ment has to ac­count and if not to­day, when we form the gov­ern­ment, we will put a full in­quiry in­to the miss­ing 3 bil­lion dol­lars.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to speak to Ram­dass about the de­vel­op­ment, how­ev­er, she de­clined. When con­tact­ed to find out what caused the meet­ing to be sud­den­ly de­ferred, PAC Chair­man Dave Tan­coo said he was un­able to com­ment. Com­mit­tee Mem­ber Dr Amery Browne in­di­cat­ed that the com­mit­tee met for its in-cam­era ses­sion and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to de­fer the pub­lic hear­ing. When pressed for a rea­son why, he did not state.

The dis­pute be­tween Ram­dass and the min­istry arose in April af­ter the Min­istry of Fi­nance sought to de­liv­er amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts to ex­plain a re­port­ed $2.6 bil­lion un­der­es­ti­ma­tion in rev­enue. Ini­tial­ly, Ram­dass re­fused to ac­cept them and claimed that she need­ed le­gal ad­vice on whether she could re­ceive those doc­u­ments af­ter the Jan­u­ary statu­to­ry dead­line for sub­mis­sion. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al even­tu­al­ly ac­cept­ed the records and dis­patched au­dit staff to ver­i­fy them. She then sub­mit­ted her orig­i­nal an­nu­al re­port to Par­lia­ment, which was based on the orig­i­nal records. In sub­se­quent le­gal cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the par­ties, Ram­dass claimed that her au­dit team was un­able to rec­on­cile the amend­ed records based on doc­u­ments it au­dit­ed. She al­so con­tend­ed that the amend­ed records ap­peared to be back­dat­ed to the orig­i­nal statu­to­ry dead­line in Jan­u­ary. Ram­dass al­so took is­sue with the fact that the dis­crep­an­cy was ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed at $3.4 bil­lion. Im­bert has con­stant­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing. The min­is­ter’s lawyers claimed that the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion af­ter the ini­tial es­ti­mate re­vealed that the vari­ance was in fact $2,599,278,188.72, which was at­trib­uted to Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), in­di­vid­ual, Busi­ness Levy and Green Fund Levy con­tri­bu­tions. In lay­ing the spe­cial re­port in Par­lia­ment, Im­bert op­posed com­ments made by Ram­dass in an af­fi­davit in her case in which she claimed that her abil­i­ty to per­form a prop­er au­dit and ver­i­fy the is­sues that caused the er­ror was ham­pered as she was al­leged­ly blocked by the Cen­tral Bank from ac­cess­ing its elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem. Last week, Ram­dass was giv­en the green light to con­tin­ue her law­suit over a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed probe in­to the han­dling of a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of rev­enue in the na­tion­al ac­counts. Five Law Lords of the Privy Coun­cil dis­missed the ap­peal brought by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and the Cab­i­net af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from at­tor­neys for the State at the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court Build­ing in Lon­don, Eng­land.