US Attorney, Janis Brennan, on Tuesday presented the District Court of Columbia with an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief on behalf of the Guyana government in the case of the legal challenge by the Atlantic Tele Network (ATN) against the US Treasury Department and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) over an information technology sector loan for Guyana.
Sources on Tuesday indicated that Judge Jackson, before whom the matter is being heard, declined to read the brief and indicated to the court that the Government of Guyana should be made a party to the proceedings. ATN was granted 60 days to join the Government of Guyana as a party and the matter was fixed for September 27 for report. The judge said he would not consider motions by the US Treasury and the IDB to dismiss the action until Guyana had been heard.
ATN is asking the court to direct the US Treasury Director, Paul O’Neill, to instruct Jose Forquet, the US executive director on the IDB board, to veto the project for Guyana and to prevent the IDB from approving this and other loans to Guyana on the ground that the loan project infringes upon its monopoly rights in Guyana.
The company went on the offensive in the US against the IDB loan project after it perceived that it was not getting anywhere in negotiations with the government to end its monopoly in return for certain benefits.
A Memorandum of Understanding was expected to be signed by the two sides to seal the agreements reached up to the end of March, but sources said it was because President Bharrat Jagdeo rejected the agreements reached up to that time that ATN resorted to lobbying against the IDB project in the US.
The source said that during those negotiations the GT&T team was reporting directly to ATN’s chairman, Cornelius Prior and was being given clear directions and the government’s negotiating team headed by Attorney General, Doodnauth Singh, was reporting back to Prime Minister Sam Hinds.
The source said that when the initialled minutes of the intensive round of negotiations were shown to the President, he was reported to have rejected these outright as not conforming to what he believed should have been the concessions made on the government’s behalf.
The source said it was subsequent to this that Singh wrote to GT&T and informed the firm that Cabinet was still to consider the MOU. The source said that shortly before ATN began to intensify its lobby against the project, the President was reported to have told his negotiators that he would see if he would have time in Spain while attending the EU/Latin America and Caribbean summit to consider the MOU, but upon his return, ATN heard nothing on the issue.
A source close to ATN said the firm was willing to continue from where it left off in the negotiating process in Trinidad even though the momentum in the case in Washington was in the firm’s favour.
The source said that it would be a less expensive option for the government and noted that the government had time before it was joined in the court matter with the IDB and the US Treasury to decide whether it would want to reconsider and send the draft MOU to ATN/GT&T for verification.
This source said that despite having lost faith in the negotiating process, the firm was willing to take a chance that the President would be willing to change his position as he had felt that reaching agreement with ATN was not important to the IDB loan project. However, the source said, this has proven not to be the case.
It is understood that counsel appearing for the IDB in Washington on Tuesday told the court that consideration of the loan was not on its agenda for Wednesday (yesterday) and indeed was not imminent.
Although the IDB is not precluded by the court order from considering the loan before the matter comes up again on September 27 the judge asked that ATN should be notified if it decided to do so.