US pulls visas for two MPs, others charged in GRDB matter

Jun 17, 2017 News

The United States of America has yanked the visas of two sitting Opposition Members of Parliament (MP). According to the PPP in a statement Thursday night, the two MPs are Dharamkumar Seeraj and Nigel Dharamlall.
The revocations came after several persons were slapped with charges following a police investigation sparked by a forensic audit into the operations of the state-owned Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB).
The Opposition said that the two recently received letters from the Consular Section of the Embassy of the United States of America, Georgetown, Guyana, informing them that their non-immigrant visas have been revoked.
“The letters further state that the Consular Section is now in receipt of information which it did not have at the time that the visas were granted.”
PPP said that similar letters were received by the other persons who were slapped with “fabricated charges” in relation to GRDB.
“All the persons charged have pleaded not guilty to those charges and therefore, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
The party, which lost the 2015 general elections after two decades in continuous power, said that the two MPs have instructed their attorneys -at-law to write to the Consular Section of the embassy requesting the new information which it has received.
“The PPP will pursue this matter as far as is possible,” the statement said.
On May 19, six former board members of GRDB were slapped with fraud related charges and placed on $500,000 bail each for failing to make a proper entry into a register of a company with the intent to defraud $362M, from the entity’s Republic Bank account.
The prosecution case is that between 2012 and 2015, the six officials committed the acts knowing that it was contrary to the entity’s standard operating procedures. They were not required to plead to the indictable offence.
They were also ordered to lodge their passports with the police and report to the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) every Monday at 9:00 hours.
The six officials hauled before the court are former General Manager of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) Jagnarine Singh; former Deputy General of GRDB and People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Member Madanlall Ramraj; General Secretary of the Rice Producers Association (RPA) and PPP/C Member of Parliament, Dharamkumar Seeraj; former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and PPP/C Member of Parliament, Nigel Dharamlall; former General Manager of the Guyana Oil Company Badrie Persaud and the Deputy Permanent Secretary Finance Ministry of Agriculture, Prema Roopnarine.
The coalition government, following its victory at the polls in 2015 announced the launching of several forensic audits into a number of state agencies.
The findings of the audits were alarming, the administration said, and decisions were taken to hand the files over to the police for further investigations.
A number of persons have been charged.

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