Davendra Rampersaud, the pharmaceutical supplier who was freed last year of supplying the Ministry of Health (MOH) with expir-ed HIV test kits, is now facing a six-count indictment in the US, which accuses him of conspiring with others to divert kits to Guyana which were paid for by USAID and earmarked for Kenya.
Rampersaud was recently arrested in the US on a January 19, 2023 arrest warrant following the release of the superseding six-count indictment. At the centre of the conspiracy that involves his company, Caribbean Medical Supplies Inc (CSMI) is that he, in collusion with others (names withheld in court documents) supplied the Ministry of Health, Guyana with HIV testing kits that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had paid for. The conspiracy continued even though during the period the accused were warned that what they were indulging in was illegal.
According to details in the court documents, the kits, other health commodities and medical products were produced by a company only identified as Manufacturer 1 which selects and authorises specific companies in different regions of the world to sell and distribute its products. Another company, only identified as Distributor 1, was said to be the sole distributor authorised to sell products, including HIV kits, for Manufacturer 1 in Guyana and over the years the Guyana government awarded this company several contracts to supply test kits to the Ministry of Health.
Another company, identified as Manufacturer 2, is also in the same manufacturing business and provides HIV test kits to global programmes, including those funded by USAID and other international donors. Distributor 1 was also the sole authorised distributor for this company’s kits in Guyana. The document pointed out that Rampersaud’s company was never an authorised supplier or distributor of Manufacturer 1’s products and was not permitted to provide its products to the Ministry of Health, Guyana. The conspiracy Rampersaud and others were involved in commenced on December 24, 2014 and went right up to the date of the indictment.
He and others are accused of knowingly stealing, purloining, and converting to their own gain, and with the use of others, health commodities that had been paid for by USAID as part of a health care benefit programme. They knowingly, without authority, sold, conveyed and disposed of the same commodities. Rampersaud and his co-accused were also said to have willfully stolen and converted, without authority to the use of themselves and others, properties and other assets valued in excess of US$58,000 which were intended for the use and benefit of the people of Kenya.
It was stated that between November 2015 and December 2019, Rampersaud and his company made payments in excess of US$177,000 to another defendant (name withheld in court
documents). The money represented payment for medical commodities which had been diverted from Kenya and other countries to Guyana.
On June 5 2015, Rampesaud was accused of soliciting HIV test kits made by Manufacturer 1 from an unknown source, to whom he stated, “We have a number of customers who are interested in [Manufacturer 1 products] and the current supplier for the Caribbean is not good. At the moment we have a need for 30,000 [of Manufacturer 1 kits] and [Manufacturer 1 supplies]. Can we work together for this request?” Just about one month later, July 1 2015, at the request of Rampersaud, a company only identified as Com-pany 1, which operates out of Florida, provided a fraudulent letter of authority to him to operate as an authorised agent to represent Manufacturer 1 and to distribute its products in Guyana. The fraudulent letter of authority was for the time period July 1 to December 31 2015.
In November of the same year, Rampersaud and his company were awarded a sole source contract by the Ministry of Health, Guyana to supply Manufacturer 1 test kits to the ministry. From November 27, 2017, inclusive of other dates right up to sometime before or around January 16, 2020, Rampersaud wired various sums of money to a bank account controlled by one of his co-accused as payment for HIV test kits, some of which had been diverted from Kenya to Guyana and a number of which were funded in part by USAID. These kits were provided to Guyana’s Ministry of Health.
Early the following year, January 8 2016, Ramperaud was informed and knew that neither he nor his company had authority to sell Manufac-turer 1’s products but he continued to supply the Ministry of Health, Guy-ana with them. On March 14 2017, Manufacturer 1 wrote another letter, this time to an unknown company or person [name withheld in court documents], informing that products were being illegally diverted from Kenya, that USAID was funding the procurement of the products and that the conduct of exporting, selling, and distributing items to Rampersaud and his company was unlawful.
On March 14, 2017, the said person or company written to by Manufacturer 1, forwarded the communication to Rampersaud, but yet the two continued shipping the items to Guyana. In December 2019, 400 of Manufacturer 2 test kits were shipped to Rampersaud which were all diverted from the USAID-funded health programme. These were delivered to the Ministry of Health, Guyana in January 2020.
Should Rampersaud and his co-accused be convicted, the court has already been petitioned that they shall forfeit to the US government any property, real or personal, constituting, derived from or traceable to proceeds they obtained directly as a result of the offences. It is not clear when Rampersaud was arrested.
On May 5 last year, Magistrate Zamilla Ally-Seepaul freed Rampersaud from a charge of supplying expired HIV kits to the Ministry of Health, Guy-ana. Rampersaud was on trial on the charge that on January 16, 2020, he sold and supplied 400 units (20 packs) of Unigold HIV test kits, batch #HIV7120026, which had its expiry date as December 5, 2020 with misleading representation, to the Ministry of Health, Guyana Materials Management Unit at Diamond, East Bank Demerara.
The case was dismissed as the court upheld a no-case submission, agreeing that the prosecution failed to prove essential elements of the offence. The defence had also contended that the prosecution failed to obtain sufficient evidence to show that Rampersaud imported the test kits and to establish that the court had jurisdiction to hear the matter.
In 2020, CMSI was accused of supplying the expired HIV test kits by the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD). Then permanent secretary of the Ministry of Health Collette Adams, wrote to Rampersaud and informed him that an investigation was launched into allegations received that his company had supplied expired or tampered HIV Uni-Gold test kits to the ministry. “As such the ministry has taken a decision to cease all delivery of drugs that was or are to be supplied to the ministry with immediate effect,” Adams wrote.
In a statement following the dismissal of the charge, CMSI had said that it was a testament to the fact that the GA-FDD had rushed to prosecute Rampersaud without sufficient evidence to support the charge, while engaging in a very public campaign to bring the reputation of CMSI and Rampersaud into disrepute. “This has resulted in irreparable damage to the goodwill and professional reputations of Mr Rampersaud and CMSI. With the dismissal of the charge, CMSI and Mr Rampersaud look forward to renewed and continued engagement with the Government of Guyana and the private sector in the interest of and for the benefit of the public and private health sectors,” the statement had said.
“CMSI continues to be a transparent and reputable company that provides pharmaceutical and healthcare products to the public and private sector across Guyana and is expanding its reach in the Caribbean. CMSI continues to have an unblemished record for the provision, installation and use of pharmaceutical and healthcare products since CMSI’s incorporation and this record continues as of today,” the statement added.
