THE Fraud Squad of the Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Monday completed their investigations into allegations of fraud against former Minister of Public Service, Dr. Jennifer Westford.
Those of her personnel officer, Margaret Cummings have also been completed, and along with hers, dispatched to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for advice, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum has confirmed.
Word is that the chambers of the DPP would have received in excess of 20 files pertaining to the investigations, dating back to more than two years.
All the files, according to sources, have to do with the transfer of funds from the then Office of the President to the Ministry of Public Service, and were done at Westford’s behest, through her personnel officer.
Reports are that once those requests reached the Office of the President, the funds were then signed off by then Permanent Secretary, Omar Sharif, who is still in the employ of the Ministry of the Presidency, as the Office of the President is now called.
According to persons close to the investigation, those files that were sent to the DPP only implicate Westford and Cummings as being part of the alleged fraud. There is no reference to either former Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, or Sharif as being part of the alleged scheme that has seen hundreds of millions of dollars being unaccounted for.
Investigators say that based on information contained in the files that have been seen, funds were requested by the Public Service Ministry from the Office of the President to facilitate reviews of the services and various programmes within the Public Sector.
Turns out, however, that the funds were never used for the purpose for which they were intended, as no records to support those claims or works have ever been produced.
Additionally, several persons reportedly listed as being part of the team that visited several areas across the regions to conduct the assessment have all denied ever knowing of such an initiative by the then ministry, much less travelling to those communities and regions on matters of such import on behalf of the ministry.
There were also questions as to why the then Office of the President was issuing funds to the ministry in such large amounts, when those funds ought to have been issued by the Ministry of Finance.
In early August, news surfaced that the government had uncovered a fraud of huge proportions, where more than $600M could not be accounted for, after those monies were issued in several tranches to the Ministry of Public Service from the Office of the President.
The police were called in, and the matter has since been part of an active police investigation. The same former minister and the Personnel Officer are presently before the courts for illegally transferring several expensive State SUVs to herself and close relatives mere days before the PPP/C was voted out of office in May of this year.
The former minister and the former staff are on court bail in the combined sum of over $1M.

By Leroy Smith