The sum reportedly missing from the former Ministry of the Public Service has jumped to more than $500M, according to Minister of State Joseph Harmon who yesterday said that the money had been transferred from the former Office of the President to allow for the ministry to carry out duties in various regions.
The missing money is at the centre of an ongoing police probe and sources say that as documents are perused more and more is showing up as unaccounted for.
Just last week Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum told Stabroek News that what started out as $120M had at that point reached to at least $355M.
Police have been questioning the former minister Jennifer Westford and the Ministry’s Chief Personnel Officer Margaret Cummings in connection with the investigation.
Asked for specifics on what the sums had been intended for, Harmon told reporters gathered at his weekly post cabinet press briefing that the money had been withdrawn from accounts that were at the former Office of the President and given to the Public Service Ministry for work to be done in the Regions. He did not elaborate on what this regional work entailed.
According to Harmon, the first reported figure was somewhere in the vicinity of $120M for the year 2014. Based on what he explained, in the years preceding, amounts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars were found to be unaccounted for. While he did not have an exact figure, he said that as of now the figure is more than $500M.
“These matters are being investigated by the Guyana Police Force. In fact when we got the first indication that there was a problem, we submitted the documents to the police force and since then they have had a team of policemen here at the ministry doing their investigation work”, he said.
He opined that at the appropriate juncture when they police believe they have enough information to take the matter further they will do so. “It is certainly a matter which police are handling and I am happy to say that they seem to be doing a very good job so far”.
Asked whether any similar occurrences were found at other ministries, he responded in the negative.
It was following the unauthorised attempted transfer of registrations for several motor vehicles belonging to the Public Service Ministry that a decision was made to conduct an in-depth probe of the ministry. Both women have been charged in connection with this investigation and are on a total of $2M bail. It was Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman who first informed the media that Westford was the subject of a second police investigation.
Sources close to the investigation have disclosed that the two women are the only two persons being investigated in this matter. They both turned up at CID headquarters during last week at the behest of detectives.
According to one source police are in possession of documents which show a request for money and the subsequent honouring of that request in three parts earlier this year. Stabroek News was reliably informed that on each of those occasions millions of dollars were handed over to a senior official of the ministry.
The same thing was done on the previous occasions.
It would appear that attempts were made to ensnare other officials of the ministry in the request made but they have all since denied knowledge of it. In addition to pursuing documents, detectives have been interviewing the staff at the ministry.
