CITY Magistrate Fabayo Azore has set February 17, 2017 as the trial date for former Board Director of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), Carvil Duncan.Duncan is accused of conspiracy to steal over $27M from the company. The trial date was set on Thursday and it was revealed that a total of seven witnesses are slated to testify.

On January 4, 2017, Magistrate Leron Daly had recused herself from the case against Duncan, explaining that she had previously dealt with Duncan’s other matter, which she dismissed last November.

Daly transferred the matter to Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan for reassignment and the Chief Magistrate later transferred the matter to Magistrate Azore for trial.

Duncan is before the court in relation to a charge, where he is accused of conspiring with another to steal $27,757,547, belonging to GPL between May 7 and 8, 2015. It was reported that Duncan and a former senior GPL official, Aeshwar Deonarine, were part of a multi-million-dollar fraud at the power company. The men are alleged to have illegally transferred close to $28M to their personal bank accounts from GPL.

The Government had asked the police to investigate Duncan and Deonarine last July. It was reported that the men paid themselves without authorisation.

The discovery of the suspicious transfers was made by independent auditors, who were probing an account which holds proceeds of oil shipments from Venezuela. It was while tracking payments to GPL that auditors unearthed the strange transactions.

Police issued an arrest warrant for Deonarine after he fled the country.