A promise back in August of this year by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo to close the State Assets Recovery Agency has been finally been fulfilled. Guyana’s Attorney General Anil Nandlall at the weekend said “SARA has been an abysmal failure.”
He further stated, “SARA is unlawfully established but, in the Act, which is the subject of legal challenge in the court because in the view of many, it is unconstitutional and there is a myriad of proceedings pending in the court about the Act itself that brought SARA into existence,”
Since its establishment, the unit has tried desperately to execute, via the courts, its mandate to recover and prosecute those involved in what the past administration deemed as the biggest white-collar crime in history.
But the AG had a different view on what SARA has done so far. He said, “The only investigations that and charges that SARA has done relates to former Ministers of the government at Prado Ville and they have charged GBTI for buying a piece of land 10 years ago from the then government. Absolutely ridiculous, they have lost the case.”
The Attorney General claimed SARA, years after its establishment, is empty handed, after consuming millions of dollars. The government however plans to do its own version of the agency sometime during its tenure.