SOCU raids GRDB offices as probe widens
Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) officials and heavily armed policemen yesterday morning descended on the Kingston offices of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) as part of a wider probe into financial irregularities.
Stabroek News was told that policemen blocked off the parts of Cowan Street near the GRDB, while SOCU officials spent some time inside combing through documents. The search operation began around 9 am.
Head of SOCU Sydney James, who confirmed that investigators visited the GRDB, said that investigations are being conducted as a result of the forensic audit. Asked if anything was removed from the GRDB building, James said he could not reveal and that all he could say was that investigations are continuing.
Stabroek News was unable to reach GRDB officials for a comment as according to an employee they were all at a meeting.
It was Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman who revealed late last month that the audit had uncovered several financial irregularities, including that officials were engaged in an unauthorised foreign currency trade using the PetroCaribe fund.
Trotman, who was speaking at a post-Cabinet press briefing, said the report had been submitted to Commissioner of Police Seelall Persaud for further investigation and action.
He said that officials at the GRDB appeared to have used the PetroCaribe fund in a lucrative foreign currency trade. “Over a period of three to four years, this agency had over US$500 million passing through it in the form of the PetroCaribe fund. There were instances where persons within the agency used money to do trade in foreign currency. If you’re talking about half a billion US dollars, you could imagine if you are selling at a rate that is two or three dollars above that, which you are declaring it to be, and having access to those two or three dollars. The multiplying effect over several million should give you an idea,” he said. “There were several instances like this which stood out and which cried out for attention,” he added.
A report from the Government Information Agency (GINA) also reported Minister within the Ministry of Finance Jaipaul Sharma as saying that the audit revealed that $100 million was allegedly loaned to Rice Producers’ Association General Secretary Dharamkumar Seeraj, reportedly to pay rice farmers who had supplied paddy but were owed by the previous administration.
The GINA report said, “The loan agreement featured the signatures of former minister of agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy and was reportedly approved by former GRDB general manager Jagnarine Singh.”
Sharma was reported as describing the loan, which remains outstanding, as “ad hoc” and signed with the understanding that it would have been repaid in October 2014. Trotman explained that there was no “paper or traceable signs that these loans were approved by a board or whether there were any promissory notes accompanying them.”