A doctor and a retired Guyana Defence Force (GDF) officer were arrested by the police yesterday afternoon as the probe into the alleged theft of an undisclosed amount of pharmaceutical products and other medical supplies from the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) drugs bond in Diamond, East Bank Demerara (EBD) continues.
This was confirmed by Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum.
The duo is among three suspects who are presently in police custody in relation to the probe.
On Sunday, a Ministry of Health employee was taken into police custody after he was found in possession of illegal firearms and ammunition along with a large quantity of cash.
The police have since been granted an extension to further detain the main suspect. It is believed that he along with others stole and sold a quantity of pharmaceutical products and other medical supplies from the Ministry’s EBD bond.
The suspect was arrested after the police, who were responding to a report of larceny at the MOH Diamond, EBD bond, carried out a search on a motorcar, PAB 3032 belonging to the employee and found one duffel bag which contained a 9MM Luger pistol without a magazine and two rounds of 9MM ammunition.
They also found one .380 pistol with a magazine containing 7 matching rounds of ammunition and a large quantity of cash. There were 20 rounds of .380 ammunition in the side pocket of the said bag.
The police said the suspect was cautioned on the offence and replied “officer leh we deal with this before it reach de station.”
He was taken to the Golden Grove Police Station Criminal Investigation Department (CID) office and while being questioned about the unlicensed firearms and ammunition, the police said he requested his bag and he withdrew and offered the police investigators $1,750,000 cash to forego the said charges.
At this point, the police said that he was told of the new offence committed – Corrupt Transaction with Agent – cautioned and replied “Well sir tek de whole bag a money all I want is me freedom”.
A total of $4,580,000 in cash was found. Of the amount, there was $5,760 in US currency.
A number of other Health Ministry workers were questioned and detained over the alleged larceny but were later released due to insufficient evidence.
Police Commander of Region 4B, Mahendra Siwnarine had told Stabroek News that at this point the quantum of items stolen is unclear. However, Siwnarine said the police are hoping that this will be determined during the MOH’s routine inventory check.
“Actually it was information that this was happening but we don’t have anything solid to go by. We didn’t recover anything,” Siwnarine said.
