–unlikely to return to office
PERMANENT Secretary of the Ministry of the Presidency (MoTP), Omar Shariff, on Friday visited his office to officially hand over to Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Communities, Abena Moore.
Shariff was, from July 1, sent on annual leave by Minister of State Joseph Harmon to facilitate investigations by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) and the State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU) over large amounts of money discovered in his personal bank accounts.
Guyana Chronicle understands that this Permanent Secretary, who served under the APNU-AFC administration for just over one year and under the former People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) for several years, is unlikely to return to his post at the conclusion of the investigation.
He was arrested, charged and placed on $200,000 station bail on Thursday afternoon.
“This is [a] money-laundering and tax-evasion matter, since it’s large sums of money that he has in his personal accounts,” Harmon said on Thursday, while making it clear that the investigations have nothing to do with Shariff’s role as Permanent Secretary at the MoTP.
“These matters which came up are of a personal nature, and they have to do with his own personal private arrangement, and have nothing to do with his actual office of Permanent Secretary,” Harmon said.
Shariff, a former senior member of the opposition PPP/C, also served as a former head of that party’s youth arm, the Progressive Youth Organisation. Last year, questions surfaced about his involvement in fraudulent activities that would have allegedly seen him signing off money that was transferred from the then Office of the President to the other Government agencies, including the Ministry of Public Service.
Former Minister of Public Service, Dr Service Jennifer Westford, and her assistant, Margaret Cummings, are currently before the courts to answer questions of fraud. Dr Westford, who is a Parliamentarian, has been accused of transferring over $600 million in State funds to her personal account just before the May 11 General Elections.
She will go on trial on July 6. The duo is facing 24 simple larceny charges that allege that between August 2011 and April 2015, while employed by the Government of Guyana, they stole over $600 million from the State.
They have denied the allegations and are currently on $4.8 million bail each.
