Focus of Gold Board probe limited to last month

Apr 20, 2014 News

…one suspect disappears

The Guyana Gold Board (GGB) has insisted that its control systems remain one of the most robust in the region even as investigators continued their probe into how staffers managed to breach systems into a fraud scheme.

Dr. Gobind Ganga

Police are now hunting for a technician of the Bartica branch of GGB who reportedly went on the run after the probe was launched.
The case has been generating attention as there were questions over the integrity of GGB system. The Gold Board is the official regulator for the buying of raw gold.
Earlier this month, the board announced that it closed one of its main sub-offices at Bartica, Region Seven, a community located up the Essequibo River and once considered the gateway to the hinterlands.
The closure was said to be because of allegations that staffers may have tampered with the gold being purchased from miners.
Gold Board sources insisted that the probe is centered on a specific timeframe, March, when the bulk of the alleged tampering of the gold took place.
It is believed that as much as 50 ounces of gold ($10M) was involved. Police are working on the theory that staffers colluded in switching purchased gold with silver and were doing so almost on a daily basis.
It is also not being ruled out that the staffers could have also colluded with miners by buying gold of a lower purity quality and passing it through the Gold Board system as gold of a higher quality attracting better prices.
At least six persons were taken into custody, including the female manager and the accountant.
Police are also looking at how one of the women was able to acquire and construct a multi-million dollar house, on her salary, in Bartica.
One news item sent on the international wires recently even went so far as to suggest that tainted gold is being sold on the international markets.
However, GGB’s Chairman, Dr. Gobind Ganga, said over the weekend that the internal controls that exist in the entity made it virtually impossible for the incident to be anything but an isolated one.
“We cannot, of course, for security purposes disclose exactly what these controls are. But to even suggest otherwise would be inferring that the every worker at Gold Board was involved.”
Ganga, also the Deputy Governor of Bank of Guyana, announced last week that the Board has engaged the services of an external auditor to perform a full forensic audit of the activities of the GGB at its locations to assist with the current investigation by the police.
The official stressed that all “gold purchased by the Guyana Gold Board are first stored under the strictest security systems where it is impossible to allow for any tampering It must be emphasized that all gold purchased by the GGB are tested to ensure a definitive level of purity before any intermediation is undertaken.” 20
Kaieteur News was told that when gold is being sold at a gold board office, it is tested using a mould and then weighed using a precision scale in front of the seller. The tests include purity levels determination and checks for weight.
It is then placed in safes and rechecked at the end of the day. “Even at the point of selling it overseas to the Royal Canadian Mint, the checks are in place to ensure purity. Any discrepancies on stock that we have will be picked up because of what we have.”
The checks continue at the head offices of the GGB with more tests for purity and weight at different points in time.
With the manager holding custody to the safe, Kaieteur News was told that investigators are almost convinced that there was staffers’ collusion in the scheme, which went on for a month.
The case is worrying authorities as gold, remained for the third consecutive year, the biggest foreign exchange earner and a major spinner and employer of the economy. Last year, gold exports earned a massive US$648.5 million.