Auditor General to turn over GECOM fraud reports to DPP

Mar 08, 2018 News

Auditor Genera: Deodat Sharma

Auditor General Deodat Sharma will hand over the fraud reports on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for legal advice.

Sharma made this disclosure yesterday to Kaieteur News, a day after the Chairman of GECOM, Justice James Patterson (ret’d) challenged him to take the reports to the police.

According to Sharma, the files will be prepared and sent to the DPP’s office by next week.

Audits were conducted at GECOM following the 2015 General Elections. The Auditor General’s office prepared three reports based on their investigations into the procurement of radios totalling $100M, the purchase of pliers and the procurement of toners.

Following the investigations, Sharma submitted his findings to the seven-member commission with a recommendation that the reports be turned over to the police for further investigations.

Last week, Sharma indicated that he was providing the Commission with more time to finish their review. This was not well received by the GECOM chairman.

A verbally upset Patterson told Kaieteur News that the Auditor General has been attacking GECOM’s Chief Executive Officer, Keith Lowenfield.

“He has been attacking my man [Lowenfield] and I don’t like it. If he [Sharma] has powers to exercise then exercise it; if he gets material to jail the man, then do it. Don’t every week, keep harassing my CEO. I don’t like it,” Patterson stated.

The GECOM Secretariat, headed by Lowenfield, has been accused of deliberately overseeing a system of procurement irregularities involving hundreds of millions of dollars in purchases – from radios, to pliers and batteries, to toners.

Sharma and his team had descended on the GECOM office to investigate worrisome procurement practices at the entity that overlooks general and local government elections.

One of the activities for the 2015 general elections was the purchase of several communication radios. This particular report raised many unanswered questions.

It was found that less than 90 percent of the radios were used despite the strong reasons advanced by GECOM to the administration for the purchases. Some $100M was spent.

It was found that the radios arrived too late to be deployed for the May 11, 2015 elections.

The report found that on top of that purchase for the radios, which were all outdated, GECOM went ahead and bought 12 satellite phones for use, in case the radios could not be put into operation.

When Local Government Elections were held in 2016, the radios were still not used.

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