The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Guyana Tele-phone & Telegraph (GT&T) company Royston Rachpaul and three others employees of the company have proceeded on leave to facilitate an audit by the company’s parent company Atlantic Tele Network (ATN).
Contacted yesterday, Rachpaul confirmed to Stabroek News that he has been asked to go on leave but said there was nothing strange about this as this has always been the case around this time of the year to facilitate the parent’s company audit. Stabroek News understands that the other persons to proceed on leave are Sachin Persaud, GT&T’s internal auditor, Karmachand from the Management Information Systems (MIS), and Richard Sukdeo, also from the MIS department.
According to Rachpaul, he has been holding the position of CFO for the past two years and he always proceeded on leave at this time of the year for the audit. He said ATN can have its auditors do the work or it can appoint a company to conduct same.
“There is nothing strange about this so I was really shocked at reports in the press,” Rachpaul told Stabroek News while maintaining that they going on leave does not indicate that they are involved in anything untoward.
He also dismissed reports that him going on leave had anything to do with an ongoing investigation of financial records at the National Communications Network (NCN), which was triggered by the fact that a $3.9M cheque for incentive payment to the production team that worked on GT&T’s jingle and song competition was made payable to Martin Goolsarran, who has since been sent on administrative leave.
Rachpaul would have become CFO after Yog Mahadeo moved up from that position to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Attempts to contact Mahadeo on the issue proved futile.
Meanwhile, this newspaper understands that all of the persons now on leave have been working on the company’s popular 10/10 softball competition and would have been paid project fees.
