A creeping caricature

Jan 30, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Mr. Aeshwar Deonarine was the Deputy CEO (Administration) of GPL when an audit revealed that he was awarded $27.4 million in retroactive increase in salary that on the surface appeared to be an illegal transaction. The alleged criminal act by Deonarine had sufficient validity in the eyes of the relevant authorities to remove him from active duty. It was widely reported that Deonarine agreed to repay the money. This discovery was made in July and days after Deonarine accepted repayment had to be done.
Then Mr. Deonarine left Guyana. This week, Mr. Deonarine was charged for the alleged financial crime. Little enthusiastic boys and girls are stopped at the airport after a perusal of the database shows that they were on student loans and cannot leave unless given permission. But Deonarine was allowed to leave. My sources told me he left with a one-way ticket.
If this crass incompetence occurred when the PPP was ruling, the opposition criticism would have reverberated all over Guyana. And the PPP Government would have resented press reports of it being referred to as an incompetent regime.
Let’s move to a painful tragedy. The death of intelligence officer Pyle and his wife and an innocent driver is an unbearable burden for this poor country. Mr. Pyle leaves to mourn two small children which one would hope the State looks after until they have graduated from University.
It has been revealed that Mr. Pyle was sent to approach members of Winston Brassington’s family out of the belief that an illegal act was being committed. Mr. Pyle was sent to the wrong address and approached persons that did not belong to the family of Brassington. It turned out that high state intelligence personnel did not know the house that Mr. Brassington lived at in Kingston. But social activist Mark Benschop did years ago.
We were outside the construction site of Marriott picketing the Chinese company for not hiring locals. Mark Benschop decided that the NICIL boss, Brassington, was the one responsible for bringing the Chinese company so he staged a one-man picket outside Brassington’s home. That was about three years ago yet state intelligence did not know where one of the most controversial public officials in Guyana lived. Can this be deemed macabre incompetence?
If it is then it gets more bizarre and the tragedy of the Pyle family gets more painful when the Guyanese people are informed about where Brassington was the past seven months.
Winston Brassington was drowning in tempestuous waves of alleged scandals since 2008. By the time Jagdeo had demitted office, the opposition APNU-AFC described Brassington as one of the architects of Jagdeo’s financial edifice. The APNU-AFC opposition in and out of Parliament pursued Brassington for financial activities that according to them violated the laws of the country.
This same hunted man was accepted by his hunters for seven months. He stayed in his office and worked for his hunters for seven months. After these seven months, the police raided his office to stop the removal of incriminating evidence. Evidence that Brassington had in his control seven months after the Coalition came to power. If on coming to power, Brassington was immediately interdicted and investigated Mr. Pyle and his wife and that innocent driver in the three-way smash up would have been alive today.
There is another dimension to the creeping caricature that is coming out of the new government. Carvil Duncan was charged with Deonarine and they were only charged because they refused to pay back the money they allegedly ripped off from GPL. So while little boys and girls who work as clerks in the civil service are hauled before the courts for stealing petty cash from the state, two senior state officials would not have been placed before the courts to make restitution but would have been allowed the niceness of depositing their pay-back cheques at GPL’s front desk.
Now here is the thing that interests me. If the police had issued a notice to be hand-delivered to Brassington’s home instructing him to visit CID at Eve Leary, what address would have been on the envelope?
If the police had charged Brassington, to which address would the summons have gone to?  In relation to Mr. Duncan, he is on a number of Service Commissions and therefore will have to step down until his court matter is completed; but will he? And if he does not will the creeping caricature extend its tentacles and we will see a man on the Judicial Service Commission making highly important decisions for the Judiciary at the same time he is on trial for stealing public funds?

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