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What is the real role of Sam Sittlington?
Dear Editor,
Government’s Advisor, Dr. Sam Sittlington, continues to cement himself in operational matters of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU). Isn’t it about time that the British High Commissioner comes clean on Mr. Sittlington’s role with SOCU? Is he an Advisor? Or is he more involved? Are the British taxpayers aware of what their monies are being spent on?
Editor, it has been over a year since concerns were publicized about a Government Minister, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan, engaging Mr. Sittlington. It was the Minister who let the ‘cat out of the bag’ anyway. He had said, according to the report, that :“The fact (is) that I had some wine with Sam on Wednesday evening at Oasis because I wanted to thank him for the great work he did at SOCU.” This ‘wine-drinking’ happened days after top leaders of the former government were hauled into SOCU.
By now, most Guyanese are clear on what the role of SOCU was supposed to be. As a former Leader of the Opposition, Mr. David Granger, at a press conference on October 11, 2014, acknowledged that SOCU was assigned “as the investigative arm of the FIU.”
Another Cabinet Minister, Mr. Carl Greenidge, (former Shadow Minister of Finance), also in 2014 said: “The FIU, after receiving that report (from its reporting institutions), will now send it off to SOCU which will operate as its investigative arm.”
Editor, many people seemed to have forgotten not only this, but also the questions about what SOCU has been turned into, especially after Guyanese read reports of the deaths of a Guyana Defence Force rank, Robert Pyle and his wife, Stacy Pyle, as well as a truck driver, Linden Eastman, on December 30, 2015.
The Guyana Defence Force said the deaths occurred during a legitimate operation in which the Force was supporting the work of SOCU.
Coming back to present happenings – with the controversy surrounding shift in the work of SOCU from the purpose it was set up for, the questionable operations of the Unit under this new Government, and the personalities involved –Guyanese need answers on the role of Mr. Sittlington in Guyana.
What do we know about Mr. Sittlington? Other than he was a police officer in Ireland, has a company, ‘The Fraud Company, Ltd.’ and that he has worked in other Third World countries. Is Mr. Sittlington the latest ‘consultant/advisor’ using Guyana to bolster his resume?
For personalities like Mr. Sittlington boasting that he worked on cases that resulted in the ‘jailing of some black people’ (rationale being if you’re not white, you’re black), would that not mean that Guyanese are accepting a new kind of colonization.
Maybe this is far-fetched reasoning, but the truth is that we know very little. The truth is also that the ambitions of personalities like Mr. Sittlington seem to find a happy synergy with the goals of the new APNU/AFC Coalition Government – they fit what we heard on the campaign trail about jailing former government officials.
For example, only days ago the newspapers reported that the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams berated SOCU and the FIU over their inability to secure convictions. But, as I said earlier, most Guyanese are clear on what the role of SOCU was supposed to be.
The British High Commissioner must say what exactly is the nature work being done by Mr. Sittlington and the Government must justify the current operations of SOCU, particularly since Guyana will be reviewed by CFATF soon and the work of SOCU is linked to that review.
Sincerely,
Cedric Lord
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