Fraud charges dismissed against three GRDB officials

Aug 31, 2019 News

Senior Magistrate Leron Daly yesterday dismissed fraud related charge against three of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) officials, who were accused of failing to make proper entries into the general ledger of the GRDB’s accounts.

Singh

Dharamlall

Roopnarine

The defendants were former GRDB Manager Jagnarine Singh; former Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Prema Roopnarine; and PPP/C MP Nigel Dharamlall.
The charge against the accused alleged that in 2011 at 166-177 Cowan Street, Kingston, Georgetown, they omitted to enter some $52M in the GRDB ledger.
When the matter was called yesterday Senior Magistrate Leron Daly ruled that the charges against the defendants were dismissed as the prosecution failed to prove the case against them. She added that the Directors charged did not have any responsibility to edit the ledgers in question.
Special Prosecutor Lawrence Harris who works for the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) was representing the prosecution while attorney-at-law Sase Gunraj represented the defendants. They had pleaded not guilty to the charges on their first appearance before the courts.
GRDB is the authority charged with overseeing the rice industry throughout the country. 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.
With regards to the GRDB report, it was noted that over a three to four-year period, more than US$500M from the PetroCaribe proceeds (Venezuela rice-for-oil deal) passed through the accounts of the entity.
Among some of the “anomalies” found were loans without proper paperwork or promissory notes. There were other instances of persons in the agency using GRDB’s money 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.

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