EDITORIAL – By Stabroek News – July 10, 2022
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, and President Irfaan Ali
The most disquieting report we have carried in a very long time appeared in our edition of July 8. It was an account of the extended version of VICE News’s video documentary titled ‘Guyana For Sale’, the initial portion of which had been carried on June 18. This part had consisted largely of an interview with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and his tenant, Mr Su Zhirong, along with a VICE reporter posing as a Chinese businessman interested in a deal here. The meeting had been arranged, according to the documentary, in order to demonstrate to the supposed entrepreneur that Mr Su, a middleman, had “access at the highest level.”
In the clips of the interview which were shown Mr Jagdeo did not implicate himself directly in the ‘business deal’, and he later strenuously denied any implication that he was associated with corrupt practices. As for Mr Su’s specific allegations about him accepting bribes, he responded that his tenant had abused their friendship for his own gain and had lied about him, and if VICE News had been discerning, then they would have realised they were “being duped”. Subsequently he announced he was bringing a defamation suit against Mr Su, who not surprisingly is no longer his tenant. Continue reading →
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– Says project strategically aligned to Govt’s development goals
Venezuela: Illicit Trade Represents 21% of Venezuela’s GDP: Is This Our Post-Oil Future?
Venezuela – Click to enlarge
Tony Frangie Mawad | Caracas Chronicles
After calculating the current annual worth of drug, gold and gasoline trafficking and port smuggling in Venezuela, a study by the local chapter of the anti-corruption nonprofit Transparency International — with estimates from Ecoanalítica, a Venezuelan economic consulting firm — concluded that these illegal economies made up 21.74% of Venezuela’s GDP last year.
“This means they are more powerful than any other economic sector right now, including oil,” says Mercedes De Freitas, Transparencia Venezuela’s executive director. “And we are talking only about the size of four of these economies, the most important ones. THERE ARE OTHER ILLICIT TRADES: Certain types of food smuggling, diesel smuggling, cooking gas trafficking, human trafficking or timber trafficking, which could be important in some regions.” Continue reading →
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