Although the forensic audits that recommended criminal investigations of public officers for alleged crimes committed under the former government are with the police, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan says investigations are at a standstill because scared witnesses are not giving statements.
For the time being, those matters have been placed on the backburner and Ramjattan said that it is hoped that the passage of witness protection legislation may see a change in this trend.
According to him, the police have indicated that “the witnesses don’t want to write their statements up and so on [and] that is the problem because they are scared, scared like hell. They feel that these people, if they are charged based on their statement, they are gonna get trouble…and they feel threatened by that and as a matter of fact when they were giving their statements and so on, they informed me that they frighten to give further statements.”
An audit of the Guyana National Co-operative Bank (GNCB) and a number of other agencies released earlier this year recommended legal action be taken against former finance minister Ashni Singh and the principals of three entities for the recovery of investments of $866m. The investments in question comprised loans of $581M to the now abandoned Casique Hotel project at Providence, $270M to the Guyana Sugar Corporation and $15M to the Guyana Rice Producers’ Association.
During an AFC press conference on Friday, Ramjattan, who is the AFC’s leader, was asked if he would review his position on possibly reopening the case involving Singh and the financial breaches he was alleged to have committed, given the stumbling blocks being faced regarding the forensic audits.
Ramjattan explained that the stumbling blocks in the Singh matter are largely to deal with people not waiting to give written statements.
“You can give a lot of the evidence to an auditor but when it comes to criminal prosecutions you have to do the written statements and some of these persons who have to give [them] and testify when they know what the investigation is all about have been telling some of the policemen…that they are scared to death and we do not have a witness protection plan,” he told reporters.
Legal hurdles
He added that government has now gotten a bill for witness protection for Parliament. “We are trying our best to persuade these very vital witnesses, who have the cogent, convincing evidence to please talk out in a statement and then of course you have to go and give the evidence in a court of law,” he said, while adding that some of these persons come up with all kinds of stories, some of which were told to him.
“Some are saying that that fella or that suspect in that investigation is a friend of him and so on. So we having a multiplicity of reasons why some of them are not coming forward and you know you can’t go and beat a person on the head to testify or to give a police statement. They give a lot of the statements to the forensic auditors,” he added.
Ramjattan said that the unwillingness of persons to give information to the police is the stumbling block being faced. “Certainly, we are going to go into investigations of all these persons. Some of them are overseas; that complicates the issue. We don’t know if there are investigation treaties with those countries that they are living in,” he explained.
For the time being, the Singh matter will be put on the back burner, he said. “Obviously…the fact that we are not making any motion in relation to the people…not only that one, there are lots of others,” he added.
He said that the Singh matter was further complicated because “I had written while in opposition about all of this…and sent it to the DPP and they are saying that indeed it does not seem that a minister is caught in the act, so you would have to amend that law. So all of these are hurdles that we have to cross.”
He explained that the law says that only officers within the ministry can be charged, not a minister. “So we do have hurdles there and please appreciate that because indeed some of the press people also, they want blood, and these are the things that we have to go over because this is a rule of law country. It is governed by rules,” he said.
Back in June, when quizzed, Ramjattan had hinted that the police may not be called in and said that the boards of the entities involved need to take charge.
The minister when asked if the audit reports would be handed over to the police said “not necessarily,” since it is not the desire of government to “flood the police with reports which may just need the intervention of the board.” He pointed out that some of the reports have already been handed over to the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU).
Process
Meanwhile, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan, in a letter released yesterday in response to a Kaieteur News report, reiterated that there is a process established by Cabinet to deal with the forensic audits.
The letter was a response to an article titled “Govt. must seriously commit to prosecuting those who abused laws, public resources – Goolsarran,” which appeared in the Kaieteur News September 9, 2016 edition.
In his letter, Jordan explained that in March, a Sub-Committee of Cabinet was appointed, consisting of Ramjattan, as Chairman, Basil Williams, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs and Jaipaul Sharma, Minister within the Ministry of Finance, to scrutinise the forensic audit reports to determine which of them dealt mainly with administrative irregularities and which entered the sphere of criminality.
“The matters of an administrative nature addressing issues of weak internal controls and disciplinary action against those at fault will be forwarded to the respective Boards of Directors. Those of a criminal nature will be sent to the Commissioner of Police for further investigations”, he said.
According to Jordan, in the specific case of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), the final report of the forensic audit and review was submitted to Cabinet on December 7, 2015.
At its meeting of December 22, 2015, he noted, Cabinet directed that the report and the work papers of the forensic auditor, Anand Goolsarran, be handed over to the Commissioner of Police and the Head SOCU to determine whether there were any acts of criminality committed by those concerned. This was done.
Subsequently, NICIL head Winston Brassington and deputy Chief Executive Marcia Nadir-Sharma were both sent on administrative leave to facilitate the transaction audit, Jordan said, while adding that Brassington later resigned and subsequently left the jurisdiction.
According to Jordan, in January 2016, a transaction audit was undertaken by the Audit Office of Guyana and the Auditor General reported several challenges in accessing and analysing records, since the records were stored at SOCU’s office. While the Auditor General wanted the records to be returned to NICIL, in order for his Auditors to carry out their analysis and investigation, the ongoing investigation by SOCU precludes the agency from releasing the records. “Eighteen (18) issues from the NICIL Audit have been identified for further investigation. However, this will translate to a sizeable number of separate investigations,” he said.
Jordan declared that the actions taken so far “nails the contention of the anti-corruption advocates” that the government is not serious about pursuing those who might have been involved in or committed criminal acts during their time in office.
