Don’t grant licences to oil companies incorporated in tax havens – says Chris Ram

Anti-corruption advocate, Christopher Ram, is of the view that Guyana should require companies that apply for a petroleum licence to be incorporated right here.
He made the suggestion during an interview with Kaieteur News, about the suspicious Canje and Kaieteur awards made by former President and Minister of Petroleum, Donald Ramotar just before the 2015 general and regional elections.

“A number of the oil companies are incorporated in other jurisdictions where they are nothing more than a shell,” Ram said, “then they come here and they register a branch of the company incorporated in the other jurisdictions.”
He said that many companies are incorporated in secrecy jurisdictions because they are generally tax shelters, and that Guyana should not be allowing it.
“I have a big problem with it,” he said.

He explained that Guyana is free to set conditions that it finds appropriate, for its licences.
The owners of the Kaieteur and Canje blocks made sure to set the stage for secrecy in their handling of the licences by hampering full disclosure of information before they conducted transactions involving the sale of shares to other companies. They had flipped the blocks without doing any work, granting the operatorship in both cases to ExxonMobil.

The owners of the Kaieteur Block, Ratio Energy Limited (renamed Cataleya Energy) and Ratio Guyana Limited, were incorporated in Gibraltar, a British overseas territory well-known and used for facilitating financial secrecy.
Kaieteur Block agreement lists both of their registered offices at the same Gibraltar address: Suites 7B & 8B, 50 Town Range.

One of the early owners of the Canje block, JHI Associates, has managed to stay under Guyana’s radar because of its incorporation in the British Virgin Islands, which is a secrecy jurisdiction and tax haven.
JHI farmed into the Canje block just weeks after Mid-Atlantic, the original recipient, received the block from Ramotar.
ExxonMobil’s local subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) and its Stabroek Block co-venturers, Hess and CNOOC, are also incorporated in secrecy jurisdictions. Esso is incorporated in the Bahamas, while Hess is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.