Commissioners still to receive fraud report from GECOM CEO

Dec 01, 2017 News

Multiple Commissioners of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) are baffled after another meeting ended without the submission of the $100M fraud report that surrounds the purchase of communication equipment.
Kaieteur News has confirmed that the report has been handed over to the Commission and after two meetings, Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield, has not distributed it to the seven-member Commission presided over by newly appointed Chairman, Justice James Patterson (ret’d).
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Commissioners started to receive reports from Lowenfield on matters that have been executed by the Secretariat during the lack of Commission meetings due to the absence of a Chairman.
“Why we have not received the report as yet is mindboggling,” one Commissioner stated.
Justice Patterson was appointed on October 19, last, and has called two meetings since then. Commissioner, Bibi Shadick had told Kaieteur News that the auditor’s report should be placed high on the agenda for the Commission.
The audit report was handed over to Lowenfield, who is also the accounting officer, but without the Commissioners examining the report, further action has not been taken.
Auditor General Deodat Sharma has indicated a willingness to use the powers of his office to call in the police if the Commissioners fail to act on the recommendations in his report.
GECOM’s Secretariat, which is headed by Lowenfield, is being accused of deliberately overseeing a system of procurement irregularities involving hundreds of millions of dollars in purchases– from radios, to pliers and batteries, to toners.
The Auditor General had descended on GECOM’s office after a series of articles pointed to what appeared to be worrying procurement practices at an entity that overlooks General and Local Government elections.
One of the purchases for the 2015 General elections was of a number of communication radios. It was found that less than 90 percent of the radios were used, despite the strong reasons advanced by GECOM to the administration for the purchases. Some $100M was spent.

From left: GECOM’s Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield, GECOM’s Chief Accountant, Joseph Eastman and GECOM’s Manager of Administration and Support Services

It was found that the radios arrived too late to be deployed for the May 11, 2015 elections.
The radios were purchased from a Water Street businessman.
The report found that on top of that purchase for the radios which were all outdated, GECOM went ahead and bought 12 satellite phones for use in case the radios could not be put into operation. When Local Government Elections were held in 2016, the radios were not used. Checks on the radios found that six of the 50 sets were not working.
GECOM defended itself for not going to tender by saying that it had little time before the May 11, 2015 elections to undertake the purchase. There were other questionable purchases, forged quotations, and prices that were way above market prices, paid for several other items.
Some of these included Duracell batteries, nippers, toners for printers and even office furniture.
While the eventual supplier quoted for other brands of radios, it was selected over another bidder, who met the criteria. In the three quotes for the radios, one was from a separate entity dated a year earlier.
The Audit Office found GECOM breached procurement regulations when it went ahead and evaluated the quotes for the radios without first seeking the approval of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). This was done after.
In fact, the audit report found that GECOM signed the contract for the radios six days before the elections, making it impossible for the radios to be sourced, delivered, and installed in remote locations and for staffers to be trained.
GECOM, in its defence, said that it could find nowhere in the report where anyone could be found culpable and that it would be difficult, therefore, to engage the police to pursue criminal indictments.
Among other things, the police are being asked to find out how a quote from one of the entities ended up in the system, as the company has denied it ever submitted one.