KN publisher tells CDB conference of widespread corruption in Guyana

Businessman and Kaieteur News Publisher, Glenn Lall, earlier this week participated in the Caribbean Conference on Corruption, Compliance and Cybercrime, hosted by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the World Bank Group. At the invitation of the Caribbean Bank, Lall spoke on the role of the media in the fight against the corruption.

Lall is particularly incensed by recent developments in the local oil and gas sector, where extremely valuable oil blocks have been given away for free or next to nothing, with extremely generous terms. The result is that, Guyana does not get the value it deserves, while oil companies and corrupt politicians walk away with the lion’s share of the people’s wealth, Lall believes.
In his presentation, this newspaper’s publisher also pointed to widespread corruption in public procurement, for instance, in the handling of infrastructure contracts.
“[On the] schools that they’re building, that they say they’re spending billions on, it’s mind-boggling,” Lall told the panel. “It makes you just want to vomit sometimes.”

In such cases, contractors and public service actors engage in corrupt secret negotiations to place bloated prices on infrastructure projects, so they can walk away with kickbacks. Lall said that being a businessman has helped him to understand “the game,” and how to identify corruption.
“I just put up a six storey building on Regent Street,” he said, “and I plan to put a 4×8 steel plate at the top to show the price it cost me to build, as to what some schools that don’t even fit one floor of my building [cost] double and triple [of] our tax dollars.”

The panelists were particularly impressed at Lall’s novel approach to journalism over the years, expressed through various columns and mechanisms like ‘Dem Boys Seh.’
There was particular mention of the Kaieteur News ‘Blunt’ page, where the newspaper makes a brief statement on an otherwise blunt page, addressing Guyana’s leaders on their handling of the people’s wealth.

Asked about other ways used by Lall to fight corruption, he spoke of the time before the Stabroek Block agreement and other oil contracts were released. Kaieteur News had carried a single line at the bottom of the front page every day, demanding the release of the agreements.
He talked about the use of social media to get the message across, through videos made by the publisher himself, explaining that Guyana’s leaders are not prudently managing the country’s wealth.
Lall also spoke of the use of Kaieteur Radio to fight corruption, particularly ‘The Glenn Lall Show’ where he and his reporters “tell it as it is.”
Because of the nature of the job, Lall spoke of his concern for the safety and security of journalists in the fight against corruption.

“So you guys also talk about what we’re doing to safeguard journalists. I have been trying to talk with them almost every day to be careful where they go, whom they hang with, where they go and hang, and take a little break here and there. I tell them to be extremely careful,” Lall said. He urges his journalists to be careful at all times, as he has had to walk around with bodyguards for 15 years.
The businessman said that corruption in Guyana is so widespread that it has become a ‘mafia ring’ with many political players directly involved.