Dear Editor,
Re: ‘Polar beer scam… Fourteen charged with fraud, forgery’ (SN, April 29), brings to a head the long awaited charges that the acting Auditor General recommended in a report he submitted four months ago, following an extensive and intensive probe of the Polar Beer-Fidelity scam. But what seems to have shocked many who are following this case, is that no one from Fidelity Investments has been charged!
How this scam really worked is what we need to get to the bottom of to determine if justice is being meted out fairly. Looking at the names and pictures of all those people indicted, not one of them looks like they belong to the wealthy class in Guyana, and we all know many wealthy Guyanese whose source of wealth could easily land them in court if they were ever investigated.
Meanwhile, I am in complete agreement with the Polar beer defence team expressing outrage over the appointment of Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos as a special prosecutor in this case. Mr De Santos, a former Attorney-General and Legal Affairs Minister in the PPP Government, is also a current PPP/Civic MP.
There may yet be, but I know of no case precedent in the Caribbean or the Commonwealth where the government ever tapped a legislative member who sits on the government’s side of the bench to handle a criminal case in which the government is the plaintiff, but I do recall a recent case precedent in Guyana of the President appointing attorney Anil Nandlall, a PPP MP, as special prosecutor in the case of the Government versus Buddy Shivraj on fuel smuggling charges brought by the now deceased Joseph O’Lall of the Guyana Energy Authority. That case dragged on for a couple of years and was eventually dismissed. The President’s special prosecutor promised an appeal, although to date, we are not sure if he ever brought one.
When Mr De Santos says, “I’m sitting on a government bench in Parliament but I am not a member of the People’s Progressive Party,” he has to recognize that he is talking to a politically mature population that knows that MPs are not elected directly by voters but on a party list system and, therefore, must have an allegiance to the party in order to serve. It is, therefore, a slap in the face of intelligent people who long for a working justice system to hear him also claim, “I have no political baggage, and I reject any grandstanding of the lawyers who are claiming that.”
Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the court case involving the millions of dollars stolen by several OP female employees from a President’s fund for underprivileged children.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
Editor’s note
Fidelity Investment head Joshua Safeek had been charged in July last year with presenting allegedly falsified documents to customs in connection with the Polar Beer investigation. The report of the Auditor General had also recommended separate charges against Fidelity in relation to the documents presented to the probe team. No such charges have yet been laid.
