The police probe into the hundreds of millions of dollars that have reportedly gone missing from the Ministry of Public Service is complete and the matter is now in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum yesterday afternoon confirmed that earlier in the day over 20 files which make up the investigation were delivered to the DPP’s chambers for legal advice.
Former minister of Public Service Dr Jennifer Westford and the Ministry’s Chief Personnel Officer Margaret Cummings are the main subjects of the probe which began more than five weeks ago.
Blanhum said that the sum of money investigated was in excess of $600 million.
It was following the unauthorized attempted transfer of registration for several motor vehicles belonging to the ministry that a decision was made to conduct an in-depth probe of the ministry. Both women have been charged in connection with the attempted vehicle registration transfer and are on a total of $2 million bail.
It was Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman who first informed the media that Westford was the subject of a second police investigation. That investigation would have begun the day the two woman made their first court appearance.
Minister of State Joseph Harmon subsequently explained that money had been transferred from the former Office of the President to allow for the ministry to carry out duties in various regions.
The amount of money started out at $120 million before reaching some $355 million and then skyrocketing to over $600 million.
Harmon, without elaborating on what the regional work entailed, informed that the first reported figure was somewhere in the vicinity of $120 million for the year 2014.
Based on what he explained, in the years preceding, amounts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars were found to be unaccounted for.
The police were called in almost immediately after the monies could not have been accounted for. Documents were submitted to the police as part of the investigation.
Both women visited the CID Headquarters at Eve Leary in the company of their attorneys at the behest of detectives. It would appear that Cummings was the first to be contacted. Both women were questioned intensively for several days.
Stabroek News had also been told that detectives have interviewed the staff at the ministry.
According to a 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.
