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GECOM to get $5.4B, but fraud allegations remain unresolved

Nov 27, 2018 News

Some $5.4B has been earmarked for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) with $3B for 2020 general elections.
The disclosures would come at a time when three years later, allegations of impropriety involving hundreds of millions of suspect purchases of items without the proper procurement procedures have not yet been resolved. The matter was supposed to have been handed over to the police.
The announcement of the sum was made yesterday by Finance Minister Winston Jordan during the presentation of the 2019 National Budget. Jordan told the National Assembly that almost $3B of the total allocation will go towards the preparation of the General and Regional Elections, constitutionally due by August 2020.
Earlier this year, Auditor General Deodat Sharma had disclosed plans to prepare a file with the reports for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for consideration of criminal charges.
Sharma has indicated that he has completed the file, but there is no indication that it has been handed over to anyone else.
The GECOM Secretariat has been 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.
Audits were conducted at GECOM following the 2015 General Elections. The Auditor General’s office prepared three reports based on their investigations into the procurement of radios totalling $100M, the purchase of pliers and the procurement of toners.
Following the investigations, Sharma submitted his findings to the seven-member commission with a recommendation that the reports be turned over to the police for further investigations.
Sharma had provided GECOM with a time to prepare a response to the reports.
This was not well received by the Chairman of GECOM, Justice James Patterson (ret’d) who challenged the Auditor to take the reports to the police.
One of the activities for the 2015 general elections was the purchase of a number of communication radios. This particular report raised many unanswered questions.
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.
It was found that the radios arrived too late to be deployed for the May 11, 2015 elections.
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 still not used.
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