Kaieteur News Publisher Glenn Lall

(Guyana Times)A confluence of seemingly disparate events is bringing to the fore the massive financial support Glenn Lall, the owner of the Kaieteur News tabloid, has been pumping into the political Opposition parties, Alliance For Change (AFC) and A Partnership for National Unity (APNU).
This support has been estimated by objective observers as totalling in the tens of millions annually.

When this newspaper spoke to Lall earlier this month, the scandal-ridden publisher made a perfunctory denial of the charges and suggested he would not even vote for those parties at the upcoming polls.
This would certainly come as a surprise to the APNU and AFC since they, Kaieteur News and its publisher have supported each other’s causes for years – especially the concerted action to depose the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government.
In addition to monetary support, both of these parties have been given free columns in the Kaieteur News and their opinions are solicited on every possible issue that places the PPP/C in a negative light and then published with alacrity. The press coverage alone would be worth additional tens of millions, said one manager from the publishing industry.
The Guyana Times was told by several businessmen that they were forced by Lall to join the Funding a United Committee for Opposition Presidency (***OP). This is reminiscent of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) – formed in 1990 by businessmen like C N Sharma.
They pumped in millions for the re-election of then President Desmond Hoyte. The businessmen said Lall “made them an offer they couldn’t refuse”  since he had made up stories and  “snitched” on them previously to the US Consulate, as revealed by WikiLeaks.

APNU Leader David Granger

At its November Congress, the AFC declared that it was “financially sound” and had the resources to campaign for the next elections. But it adamantly refused to divulge the Financial Report, which they claimed to have presented at the Congress, much less its source of financing. Its party’s Constitution demands an audited financial report.
APNU appears broke, since it had sold some land from Congress Place earlier this year.
Starting in 2008, Lall had been rebuffed by then President Bharrat Jagdeo for some preferential treatment he had requested and in retaliation embarked on a vendetta to remove the PPP/C Government through various stratagems.
There was first of all his sensationalisation of reports on Government projects by claiming “corrupt practices” in every one of them, while ignoring and even covering up blatant Opposition excesses.
Lall’s open support for the Opposition was quite clear in the extensive coverage he gave to their operations and his ability to obtain quotes from them on any topic that was skewed against the Government. Presently, there were the recent quotes from AFC’s Ramjattan and APNU’s Carl Greenidge on “terroristic” phone calls from Attorney General Anil Nandlall.
But the actual funnelling of money to the Opposition coffers only began to surface in the wake of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) conducting an audit on Lall’s network of “businesses” in Guyana.
As reported earlier this month, this audit is still ongoing but the Guyana Times was able to learn that tens of millions were transferred to the political parties as “contributions to charitable organisations”. Political organisations are not accepted as “charitable organisations” by the GRA.
The audit has been ongoing for quite some time, but the GRA appears to be trying to ensure that the labyrinthine interlocking of companies owned by Glenn Lall locally and in the US are clearly delineated.
The Guyana Times understands that the commingling of funds between the two related group of companies were done deliberately to evade taxes both in Guyana and the US. In several instances, the “corporate veil” will have to be pierced, to expose Lall’s direct involvement.
It is widely accepted by financial experts that the major reason why APNU and AFC apposed the passing of the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering of Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill in Parliament, was because their trail of funding from illegal sources and Lall’s businesses,  foreign and domestic, would have been exposed.
Since 2009, the Organisation of American States (OAS) has created a new source of pressure on the Kaieteur News’ contributions to the AFC and APNU, by insisting on the introduction of campaign financing laws.
These laws are not intended just to capture the quantum of funding to political parties, but also the nature of the source of the funding. Since that time officials from the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), as recently as last October, have echoed such calls.
While the AFC and APNU had given lip service to the introduction of such laws – one of which was ironically introduced since 2011 by the AFC – they have studiously avoided making the law operational.
Lall’s ownership of a newspaper allows cash to be collected every day and this gives him the opportunity to cover the money trail from his other “sketchy” sources of income as described by the US Political Officer, to be funnelled to political Opposition through ***OP.