Ex-official gets 9 months in plea deal after siphoning millions
LAWRENCE POMMELS, t he ex-public official who was convicted and sent to prison for corruption-related crimes, corruptly helped himself to taxpayers’ money, the Financial Investigations Division (FID) has revealed, shedding light on the scheme that was used to siphon off millions of dollars.
Pommels, a former acting chief engineer and operations engineer at the now shuttered governmentowned company National Energy Solutions Limited (NESoL), pleaded guilty on Monday to six counts of possession of criminal property and two breaches of the Corruption Prevention Act.
He was sentenced to nine months in prison under a plea deal that also requires him to forfeit “over 80 per cent”of the total value of the four high-end luxury vehicles and $30 million in cash which were seized by law enforcement authorities during his 2018 arrest and frozen by court order.
OFFERED NO EVIDENCE
His four co-accused – Rayon Hamilton, Ricardo Harris, Horace Stewart and Kimberly Nelson – were freed after prosecutions offered no evidence against them.
Keith Darien, principal director of investigations at the FID, called the case against Pommels “a landmark case of corruption and financial crime”.
“He, along with others, deprived many rural schools, students and communities of needed electricity and Internet services by fraudulently causing NESoL to pay out millions of dollars to his associates for work which was never done,”Darien said in a statement on Tuesday.
“These monies were eventually paid over to him.”
According to Darien, the yearslong investigations revealed “significant breaches”of government procurement guidelines and “extensive mismanagement” of public funds within NESoL.
The FID said it initiated surveillance and financial assessments of Pommels’ activities in 2018 based on intelligence received about the operations at NESoL. It said the findings from the assessments and surveillance justified search operations at his Old Harbour, St Catherine home.
“This resulted in the seizure of over $20 million in cash which was hidden in a crib,” the agency said, adding that further search operations at the company’s offices led to the confiscation of records and accounts.
The FID said that’s when it discovered that “verbal contracts” worth $60 million were issued to associates of Pommels as well as a connected company without following proper procurement processes.