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Forensic audit reports of GPL, GEA, GRDB…Evidence points at illegal trading with PetroCaribe funds
– matters to be handed over to police
Government is set to hand over a forensic audit report to police investigators after a number of worrying findings of transactions at the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB).
In one instance, there are indications that large sums of money were used by staffers of the board to illegally trade in foreign currencies.
GRDB is the authority charged with overseeing the rice industry throughout the country.
More than six years ago, Guyana entered a ground-breaking agreement with Venezuela trading rice for oil.
Under the agreement, Guyana would advance a portion of the oil money on every shipment to Venezuela and pay the rest over a number of years at a minimal interest rate. The money to be paid to Venezuela was kept in special accounts.
Guyana in turn shipped hundreds of thousands of tonnes of paddy and white rice and would every so often cancel out the payments. It appeared that GRDB kept large sums of money in its accounts, lending some of it out without proper paperwork.
Upon entering Government in May 2015, the David Granger-led administration immediately ordered a number of forensic audits to determine the health of the state agencies – among them were GRDB, the Guyana Energy Agency and the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL).
On Tuesday, the Cabinet of Ministers, led by President David Granger, considered the three forensic audit reports.
Yesterday, during a post-Cabinet press conference hosted by Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, it was disclosed that in all the cases, there were issues raised during the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that warranted further investigations into “financial irregularities”.
Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, has since been ordered to follow up on GPL audit report. Both the GRDB and GEA reports were ordered to be handed over to the police for further investigations. This will be done by the Ministry of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, it was disclosed yesterday.
With regards to the GRDB report, Trotman noted, over a three to four year period, more than US$500M from the PetroCaribe proceeds (Venezuela rice-for-oil deal) would have passed through the accounts of the entity. Among some of the “anomalies” found included loans without proper paperwork or promissory notes. There were other instances of persons in the agency using GRDB’s monies to trade in foreign currency.
The losses for the Government would have been significant, especially if the money was traded for less than it should have been.
According to Minister Trotman, the losses would have been staggering if the spread on the exchange rates were two or three dollars…the multiplying effect is millions of dollars.
These were among some other instances that prompted the Cabinet on Tuesday to send the reports for more attention.
Responding to questions, Trotman noted that there will be no moves to send anyone home as the police will still have to do their work and there is a presumption of innocence for the parties involved.
However, in the case of GRDB and GPL, several senior officials have resigned or are no longer working at the entities, Trotman noted.
These include former Chief Executive Officer of GPL, Bharat Dindyal, and Chairman, Winston Brassington.At GRDB, the former Board Chairman, Dharamkumar Seeraj, is no longer Chairman while General Manager, Jagnarine Singh, is also gone.
Minister Trotman noted that Government also has been paying attention to the capacity of the police and its arm, the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) to deal with the volume of investigations needed with the forensic audits.
SOCU has been taking lead on many of the probes, using the forensic audits as the basis, but has been constrained by personnel and other resources.
Already Government has agreed for special prosecutors to be hired and possible more budgetary allocations.
The country has been paying keen attention to especially GPL, GEA and GRDB. All three entities have billions of dollars annually passing through their accounts.
GPL is handling at least US$80M annual to buy fuel for its engines among other expenses.
GEA is the agency that has been tasked with brokering the transactions.
GRDB has been buying fertilizers and even granting loans to the Rice Producers’ Association under unclear circumstances.
The Auditor General and the forensic audit reports have all pointed to severe deficiencies in the manner the monies of the state have been handled by the entities.
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