Former President Donald Ramotar has claimed that while in office he had entered into an arrangement with his Attorney General Anil Nandlall to allow him to buy law books for his personal use with funds from the Ministry of Legal Affairs, Attorney-General Basil Williams said yesterday.
According to Williams, Ramotar wrote a letter, a copy of which he has seen, to Auditor-General Deodat Sharma, detailing the arrangement after the ministry’s Permanent Secretary (PS) Indira Anandjit was sent on 52 days of leave after it was discovered that millions of dollars in law books and computer parts were missing.
Following this action in December last year, Williams said that the matter was put into the hands of the Auditor General who later reported to the Ministry that he had been written to by the former president.
“When he did come back to me he was suggesting that in the case of the law books that former President Ramotar wrote a letter to him…in which he had stated that he and the then Attorney-General had some private agreement that the Attorney-General would spend monies voted for the Ministry of Legal Affairs to buy the law books and keep them for himself,” Williams said yesterday at a press conference.
The law books would have been provided for in the budget of the Ministry but they are not in the possession of the ministry. Williams said the second day after the PS went on leave, vouchers were found confirming the disappearance of the books even though they were authorised by her for payment.
“He [Ramotar] is sending [the letter] to save the PS, as I understand, by saying she is not culpable or blameworthy because he had an agreement with Nandlall, who was AG, that Nandlall could use the ministry’s money to buy these books and keep them…”
He said he does not understand why a former president would write admitting that he was in breach of all the financial regulations.
“We don’t accept the excuse given by the Auditor General that the former President Ramotar could have a private agreement with the former Attorney-General to spend the state’s money for his own personal benefit. And I don’t know if, being a former president, he might believe that he has immunity… from actions taken but it is one of the strangest things you will find in any part of the world that an arrangement could be made between two government officials to spend public monies…for private purposes,” Williams added.
In December, Williams had said that Anandjit was sent on leave to “facilitate the ongoing audit,” into the disappearance of the law books and computer parts.
He had further said that the auditors were still working and he was therefore unable to give an exact cost of the items which could not be accounted for. However, among the legal material missing were 17 law books of the Commonwealth valued in excess of $2.5 million and computer parts costing almost that same amount. “But, as I said, the audit is ongoing…The PS authorised those purchases and the books cannot be found in the ministry nor the spares and so the investigations are ongoing,” he had told reporters.
