No charge in GuyOil/GDF $1B fuel racket

Aug 16, 2022 News

Two years on…

Kaieteur News – One year after Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had said that charges would be laid against persons involved in an almost $1B fuel racket, between the Guyana Oil Company (GuyOil) and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), no one has been charged and police are still said to be looking into the matter. Kaieteur News understands however, that two persons have so far been fired with immediate effect from GuyOil following the scandal being publicized.

The newspaper was told by well placed sources that Guyoil’s Terminal Superintendent, Joseph Evans and Leron Thompson, a billing and general clerk, were immediately terminated in direct connection with the theft and resale of the fuel. Another named staffer who previously held the general clerk post was also found to be part of the racket, but he was fired before the issue went public in relation to a different matter.

The newspaper was told that the Terminal Superintendent was directly responsible for the terminal and controlled the running of that facility, while the billing clerk would have been responsible for issuing such documents. The source stated however, that questions are still be answered as to who would have given the Terminal Superintendent approval to release the fuel given the system in place at the oil company for such transactions.

The source explained that in GuyOil, in providing prepaid fuel to the GDF, the system involved the agency’s representative coming and making its prepaid payment at the company’s finance department. The finance department and manager would then send approval to the terminal saying that the particular payment was made and give approval for fuel to be received. When the GDF representative comes to uplift the fuel, they would walk with a letter or source document stating all the relevant information, which is then sent to the terminal for the order to be delivered. “Under whose authority was Evans dispensing because he had to get the approval from somewhere,” the source opined.

The source document from GDF would have been able to provide the signatures of all those involved in the transaction among other information. But according to the source, none of the documents are available at the company and information alleges that the documents were destroyed in a bid to cover up the scandal. To destroy the GDF source document would be highly unusual since it would have been the document to reconcile the transactions allowed under the prepaid sum. It is believed that persons who were involved in the GuyOil racket are still at the company since earlier information suggested that several high level officers had knowledge of the illegalities as well as those involved with security.

The most notable issue in this matter is that fuel delivered to the GDF is done using only GuyOil tankers. However, on several occasions, a private truck had been collecting on behalf of the GDF and no one in security or the finance department flagged the transactions when the registration GHH 7538, for the private truck, showed up on several occasions as accepting the commodity on behalf of the military.

Kaieteur News learnt that the racket had been happening since 2013 where a named contact within the GDF would send a private email to the company’s Terminal Superintendent at its Providence terminal to uplift fuel. Given the prepaid arrangement, a sales invoice was delivered and the private vehicle would uplift the fuel which is said to have been taken to a service station on the West Coast of Demerara to be sold. That sales invoice is said to be the only document available to show the transaction for the prepaid fuel. In some cases the invoice had no number for the vehicle that delivered the fuel; it had the private truck number or a GuyOil registration number even when the company tanker was not used. The GDF source documents for the stolen fuel that was delivered are nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the matter reached the attention of the authorised persons who chose to act on the information which was followed by an internal audit. The newspaper learnt that an employee who was on six month probation to join the company was fired at the end of his six month when he initially tried to highlight the inconsistencies at the Providence terminal to the wrong person.

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had said that investigations had shown that close to $1 billion in fuel was siphoned off, when it was initially believed to be $300M.

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