The Government of Guyana on Tuesday terminated the contracts of all staff of the State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA).
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall in a statement announced the termination of the Agency’s Director and Deputy Director with immediate effect.
In separate letters of termination written to Dr. Clive Thomas and his Deputy Aubrey Heath-Retemyer, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall said their appointment to the posts of Director and Deputy Director of SARA respectively via contract is in breach of the State Assets Recovery Act No.14 of 2017 “and is therefore null, void and your services are as a result terminated immediately.”
Dr. Thomas and Heath-Retemyer were both appointed for a five-year period from September 2017.
Nandall’s statement said “Today, letters were dispatched terminating the employment of the staff of this Agency,” noting that the Government will undertake to strengthen asset recovery components of the AMLCFT legislation and will endeavour to enact legislation utilizing the CARICOM model of State Asset Recovery, in respect of state assets acquired illegally.
According to the Statement, the State Asset Recovery Unit (SARU) was the precursor to State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA) which was a unit “established by politicians under the last administration, the APNU/AFC, and operated out of the Office of the President”.
The Government said SARU was staffed by politicians in the name of Dr. Clive Thomas and Tacuma Ogunseye of the Working People’s Alliance, Aubrey Heath-Retemyer, a member of the PNC-USA Group and Eric Phillips who served as political advisor to former President David Granger.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP/C) has been very vocal about the establishment of the entity.
