Latest update February 8th, 2025 6:23 PM
Aug 08, 2021 News
By Renay Sambach
Kaieteur News – In this edition of ‘The Court Journal,’ I will take a look at Peter Ramcharran’s court cases. Ramcharran, 40, of Goedverwagting, East Coast Demerara, is a former accountant of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB). He was slapped with 32 fraud charges after he was extradited during 2019.
Ramcharran was extradited from Canada to face fraud allegations amounting to $414M – all of the charges are related to his role at the GRDB.
In Canada, Ramcharran had first applied for refugee status. After, he was turned down in December 2017, he sought a review of his extradition process, but this was turned down as well.
Ramcharran had reportedly been studying in Canada when authorities swooped down on him in June 2017 following a request for his extradition.
Concerning extraditions, it is not often that Guyana is successful in this quest, especially from North American countries. The extradition of Ramcharran would be seen as a huge plus for authorities here who have been insisting that it is a tool in the fight against crime, particularly of the white-collar variety.
After being extradited to face the fraud charges, it was on March 6, 2019, that Ramcharran made his first court appearance. The charges levelled against him alleged that he fraudulently converted and misappropriated funds.
The offence took place between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2015, at the GRDB’s Lot 16-17 Cowan Street, Kingston, Georgetown headquarters.
After going through the trial process, Chief Magistrate, Ann McLennan, had underscored that she is of the view that Ramcharran intended to willfully deprive the entity of the monies with his unlawful action.
During a plea in mitigation, Ramcharran’s lawyer, Nigel Hughes, sought to point out that his client’s actions had no ramifications on the GRDB, the State or the Ministry of Agriculture.
In asking the court to exercise leniency with its punishment, Hughes had said that his client has an unblemished criminal record and is “deeply remorseful” for what happened. In fact, the lawyer told the court that the monies were not stolen; they were just not recorded in the ledger.
Ramcharran’s sentencing was handed down based on the fact that the defendant evaded the police for almost two years, the sum of monies involved and the prevalence of the type of offence.
Taking into account the abovementioned, the Chief Magistrate instituted the custodial sentence.
During February 2020, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment after he was found guilty on one of the charges. Ramcharran was found guilty as charged for omitting $145M from the rice entity’s ledger.
His conviction was one of the first major convictions for the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU), an arm of the Guyana Police Force, which instituted the charges against him.
However, in May 2020, Ramcharran’s lawyer appealed his conviction and he was released on $2M High Court bail pending the outcome of the appeal. It should be noted that Ramcharran still faces the other charges.
Moreover, the former accountant was heavily implicated in the probe with regards to the six former GRDB board members who were also charged. The officials who were charged are former General Manager of the GRDB, Jagnarine Singh; former Deputy General Manager of GRDB, Madanlall Ramraj; General Secretary of the Producers Association (RPA), Dharamkumar Seeraj; former Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, Nigel Dharamlall; former General Manager of the Guyana Oil Company, Badrie Persaud, and the Deputy Permanent Secretary (Finance) Ministry of Agriculture, Prema Roopnarine – in October 2019, Senior Magistrate, Leron Daly, dismissed the charges against them.
The rice entity was responsible for executing a major oil-for-rice deal worth billions of dollars with neighbouring Venezuela. That deal ended suddenly in 2015 by a hostile Venezuela after the then Coalition Government came into office. A forensic audit, one of several ordered by the Coalition Government, had found several alarming things at GRDB.
The GRDB found itself in the spotlight after a forensic audit of that entity revealed that among some of the “anomalies” found were loans without proper paperwork or promissory notes.
From about 2009 to 2015, Guyana, under the administration of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, had entered a multi-billion dollar oil-for-rice arrangement, which the GRDB was clearing out for farmers.
However, millions of dollars of those monies were reportedly siphoned off via third-party arrangements including rental of ships and other deals for a few millers.
Feb 08, 2025
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