A $300M fraud was discovered by the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) around fuel supply at GuyOil.
This was disclosed this evening by Minister in the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar.
He was responding in a statement to a news item in today’s Stabroek News in which former Finance Minister Winston Jordan pilloried the PPP/C government budget presented on Wednesday.
Deodat provided no further information about the fraud but the matter had been under scrutiny by the authorities.
Allegations of alleged unusual activity between GuyOil staff and GDF personnel over fuel led to a police investigation.
In a statement on August 26, GuyOil did not say precisely what action had been taken but added that the state corporation suffered no loss from the fraudulent activity involving its staff and the GDF.
The statement from GuyOil followed what had purported to be an exchange between a GuyOil executive and a former senior government official which appeared to point to illegal transactions involving a prominent local company in the infrastructure sector.
GuyOil’s statement on August 26 debunked this purported exchange.
The statement from GuyOil said that at a virtual board meeting of the company in June this year, the Chief Executive Officer reported that a whistleblower report had brought to light alleged unusual activity between GuyOil staff and GDF personnel in 2020 and not 2018 as had been stated in the purported exchange.
The release said that internal investigations found the allegations to be “substantive” enough to warrant the involvement of the police and the Criminal Investigation Department is doing its own probe.
The GuyOil release said that “Following internal company investigations and according to due process procedures with identified staff members, appropriate action was taken, as transparency and accountability remain the overarching principles of GuyOil”.