A recent forensic audit of the state-owned Guyana Oil Company (Guyoil) has revealed that nearly $1b in fuel was siphoned off in a racket involving the company and the Guyana Defence Force where the fuel would be picked up and then transferred to third parties and charges are likely soon, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo says.
“An audit was just done that had Guyoil and the army implicated in a scandal, in just one vehicle alone $995M was stolen in fuel from one vehicle. The charges will be laid soon,” Jagdeo on Friday told a press conference he hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
Sources close to the investigation told Stabroek News that the audit period covered from 2015 to 2020 but it is unclear if the scheme predates that period.
As a press conference in April, President Irfaan Ali had made reference to the scheme which he termed “massive corruption” and then had said that preliminary findings had put the figure at over $300M.
“These are things we inherited and those investigations are going on and they are with the police and the Auditor General. I can’t comment more on that but we inherited massive corruption at Guyoil but these are being investigated,” Ali had said.
Jagdeo said that after the investigation was completed the sums increased to nearly $1B.
The source told this newspaper that if the racket continued for years it was because regular internal and state audits only looked at surface records and those showed that the “books of Guyoil and the Army corroborated each other”.
According to the source, it was only when the forensic audit, completed by the accounting firm Ram and McRae was undertaken, following information from whistleblowers, that the revelations of the large sums in missing fuel were revealed.
Purported email correspondence between a former senior official of Guyoil and a former government official is also being used as evidence in the investigation that has gone to the Guyana Police Force’ Criminal Investi-gation Department (CID) which is now leading the probe. The forensic auditor is working along with them, the source said.
The source said that the former government official had objected to a manager of Guyoil querying when a private company went to uplift bulk fuel in the name of the Guyana Defence Force.
“Guyoil was instructed to stand down and calm the manager of the objections,” the source said.
In other cases, “bulk carriers would pick up the fuel, take it to Camp Ayanganna where it would be signed as delivered but then it would be taken, diverted to another location…at times somewhere across the river [the Demerara River, Region 3].
“They concocted accounting records to show the fuel was received but it never was“, the source said.
Current and past officials of the Guyana Defence Force will be questioned, the source said, including current and past Chiefs of Staff as they are listed as the army’s Chief Accountant.
Last month, Guyoil’s Chief Finance Officer, Shawn Persaud and Board member, Akanni Blair were removed from their positions following a procurement scandal that has seen the Auditor General investigating and President Ali terming their conduct “inappropriate” in relation to the importer in question.
Guyoil Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Trevor Bassoo who was appointed in October last year was asked to proceed on administrative leave after a performance evaluation and subsequently resigned.
Bassoo has denied that his departure was in any way connected to the current controversy over a fuel shipment allegedly imported by Aaron Royality Inc (ARI), whose owner is claiming that he is now left with a large quantity of fuel on hand after commitments were made by some company officials that Guyoil would buy it. The dealer claims that he has evidence of the commitments by officials of the company who also tried to solicit kickbacks in return for the company’s purchase.
It was ARI’s claims that saw Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh requesting the Auditor General to investigate, as he sounded a warning that corruption will not be tolerated.
That investigation, the Minister of Finance last week updated, was still ongoing.
