Funding for a Canadian programme for Caribbean countries including Guyana has been suspended after a report was made by a minister to Ottawa’s public sector integrity commissioner of a possible conflict of interest involving Guyanese Dr Naresh Singh.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) yesterday reported that Singh, a former top ranking executive of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), was referred to Canada’s public sector integrity commission by International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino. The referral to the commission was made by Fantino yesterday.
On Monday of this week, Singh resigned from his new position as director of the Caribbean Local Economic Development (CARILED) Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), which was headquartered in Trinidad and was executing projects in Guyana and other Caribbean countries.
According to CBC News, a French newspaper on Thursday alleged that Singh was the person at the centre of a recent whistleblower watchdog report on CIDA and went on to work on a CIDA-funded project after he left the agency. It was this allegation that led Fantino to act.
“It has come to my attention that a former CIDA employee may have been in a conflict of interest,” Fantino said in the press release yesterday.
The report said that Singh went to work for the FCM as the director in charge of overseeing a new CDN$23.2-million CIDA-funded project for the Caribbean.
However, he resigned from his post at the FCM, which CARILED came under, on Monday, after the media tried to reach him for an interview.
Yesterday, CBC said that the FCM would not say whether Singh was the former CIDA executive singled out in last week’s report by the public sector integrity commissioner, but in an email to CBC News confirmed that Singh resigned from the FCM.
“Naresh Singh resigned earlier this week as director of the Caribbean Local Economic Development (CARILED) program, to pursue other employment opportunities,” said Mouktar Abdillahi, a media relations advisor for the FCM.
“I am deeply concerned about this issue, which is why I am immediately referring this matter to the public sector integrity commissioner for review,” said Fantino in the release.
Another report in the The Gazette said that FCM knew nothing last year when they received his candidacy as project manager of CARILED, a microfinance initiative for the Caribbean.
“We were not aware of the investigation…” explained Sébastien Hamel yesterday, head of international affairs of the FCM in the report.
According to the report Singh with his impressive CV was chosen for the position of Director of CARILED with a salary of CD$100,000 per year, plus significant travel allowances. It came into operation on 1 February 2012 and he began a series of at least eight trips to the countries covered by the project.
The CBC News said that while it is not clear whether Singh, who is a graduate of the University of Guyana, an Environmental Scientist and has made several visits to Guyana recently in the execution of his job, broke any rules or whether Mario Dion, the public integrity commissioner, will open a new investigation into the former CIDA executive, Fantino said future payments for this project will be withheld “until further notice.”
The report said that Dion had reported that an unnamed director general at CIDA had used government employees and equipment to help run a consulting business.
The executive had been with CIDA for nearly 10 years and was well aware of the rules in place guiding his behaviour, Dion said.
“It was not an oversight,” Dion said in an interview.
The investigation began after a complaint was filed in 2010 accusing the executive of using office resources such as fax machines and a government email address to conduct private business.
The executive also recruited administrative staff to assist in the job, which essentially was consulting to the private sector on the same subject matter the individual worked on in government, Dion said.
The investigation, which covered two years of records, confirmed the allegations.
The executive left the agency while the investigation was underway.
Dion’s office does not have the power to issue penalties or fines when they find cases of wrongdoing, and can only refer the matter to the department in question.
