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Lowenfield, Myers Mingo charged for declaring false accounts of votes
Kaieteur News – Embattled Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Roxanne Myers, and Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, were yesterday charged with conspiracy to declare false accounts of votes.
Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Roxanne Myers.
The three Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials, were slapped with two charges, one for the March 2, 2020, Regional Elections and the latter charge for the General Elections.
They appeared in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts before Principal Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus.
They were not required to plead to the charge which alleges that between March 2, 2020, and August 2, 2020, in Georgetown, they conspired with each other, together with former APNU+AFC Coalition Minister and current Chair of the People’s National Congress, Volda Lawrence; Coalition activist, Carol Smith-Joseph; Sherfern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Bobb-Cummings, Michelle Miller and others, to defraud the electors of Guyana by declaring a false account of votes for the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
Principal Magistrate Isaacs-Marcus granted the defendants bail in the total sum of $100,000, each for the two charges and the matter was adjourned to September 14, 2021.
Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo.
On June 9, 2021, the matter was filed in court. However, when the matter was called in Magistrate Isaacs-Marcus’ courtroom, the officials were not in court. As a result, the matter was adjourned to yesterday’s date, where they appeared and the charge was read to them.
This publication had reported that a few days before the new charges was filed, Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo were called into the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) at Eve Leary, Kingston, Georgetown. Crime Chief, Wendell Blanhum, had related to this newspaper that the Guyana Police Force (GPF) would be instituting two additional charges of conspiracy to defraud against the officials.
Last Wednesday, GECOM decided to send the three officials on annual leave pending the outcome of discussions on a motion seeking their dismissal.
According to reports, the decision to instruct the officers to proceed on annual leave followed a statutory meeting of GECOM Commissioners. According to a statement disseminated by the Commission, Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo, proceeded on leave with effect from last Monday.
Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield.
The officials are currently before other City Magistrates for electoral fraud. The charges stemmed from a series of alleged grave violations by the GECOM workers connected to the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections and for their defiance of the instructions by the GECOM Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, who instructed that the recount figures be used for the final results of the elections.
Their alleged attempt to rig last year’s elections has left Lowenfield facing three counts of misconduct in public office, three counts of forgery, and the two new conspiracy charges, while Myers is facing two counts of misconduct in public office and the new conspiracy charges.
In addition to the new charges, Mingo is facing four charges alleging that he misconducted himself in public office by failing to disclose the number of votes that were counted during the elections. Apart from those charges, Mingo was charged jointly with Lawrence for forgery and he also faced another joint forgery charge with Smith-Joseph. The trio is currently out on bail.
Kaieteur News had reported that the controversial Region Four Statements of Poll (SoPs) for the March 2 elections were recently handed over to investigators at CID. The handing over of the documents followed an order by the Chief Justice (Ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire, for them to be turned over to the police by the Supreme Court’s Registrar, Sueanna Lovell.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Shalimar Ali-Hack, SC, and the Commissioner of Police (Ag), Nigel Hoppie, had filed an application in the High Court for the SoPs and the Statement of Recounts (SoRs) to be released to investigators. They had requested the documents of the election in order to facilitate a fair hearing for the charges against the key GECOM officials.
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