Jagdeo accuses Jordan of selling out state lands without collecting funds
Jun 16, 2025
…but did same in Govt. with sale of 20% GTT shares
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo
Kaieteur News – While being part of a government that sold 20 per cent of shares belonging to the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT now One communication), and with some US$5 million still owed to Guyana, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is pointing fingers at former finance minister Winston Jordan over his alleged sale of state lands.
In 2012, under a People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government headed by former President Donald Ramotar, the National Industrial and Commercial Investment Limited (NICIL) made a decision to sell GTT’s shares for a total of US$30 million, but only received US$25 million at the time.
The remaining US$5 million was to be paid over a two-month period, but the government is yet to say if the money was received.
In August 2023, this publication asked Jagdeo if the US$5 million had been paid off. Jagdeo said, “I have to verify that, but most likely it has been paid, but I have to verify it.”
PPP lost power, and the coalition administration took over negotiations with the Chinese company that owed the money.
After the two-year-long negotiation failed, the coalition took GTT to court in 2018. According to reports, HKGT wanted to pay only US$3 million. The government did not agree.
The latest update on the owed monies came in 2020 when the High Court ordered GTT to pay US$3.2 million to the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL).
Justice Franklin Holder presided over the case and, in February 2020, issued a garnishment on GTT’s account for US$3.2 million.
Payment of the US$3.2 million was to be made within 14 days of the order, and all future GTT dividends were to be paid to NICIL until the remaining US$1.8 million is cancelled. The company and its shareholders were also ordered to foot NICIL’s court costs.
However, since then, there have been no further updates by the government or NICIL on whether the entire US$5 million was paid off.
At his recent press conference, Jagdeo accused Jordan of being “a person who was extraordinarily lazy in the period when I was minister of finance and president but we kept him on. He was earning a foreign salary and doing very little in the Office of the Budget in the Ministry of Finance.”
He went on to describe the former minister as ‘a disastrous minister of finance under the coalition’s five years… who just put all these taxes that I’ve been talking about layer upon layer of taxes, and in an unapologetic way… who was scandal-oriented… you remember what took place at GECOM and the conversation that was made public…you recall all of the lands that he transferred without collecting any money, some of them after the elections were held.”
He said it was the same Jordan who thought that the US$18 million signing bonus was a gift to the coalition government.
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