Davendra Rampersaud, the pharmaceutical supplier who was freed last year of supplying the Ministry of Health (MOH) with expired HIV test kits and is now facing a six-count indictment in the US, was granted US$60,000 bail on the same day he pleaded guilty to three counts of the six-count indictment.
Following his recent guilty plea before Judge Richard M Gergel, a sealed order was made about his release. It is not clear when he will be sentenced.
Rampersaud is accused of conspiring with others to divert kits to Guyana which were paid for by the United States Agency for International Development (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 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.
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, Guyana. 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.
