THE PPP has expressed concern that Government has sought High Court warrants to gain access to the bank accounts of former senior Government functionaries and to search the residences of PPP party members who once held prominent positions in society.Ventilating this concern was PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee, at the party’s weekly press conference at Freedom House on Monday. Rohee was unable to say which party members are to be served with warrants, but he accused the Government of using the State Asset Recovery Unit (SARU), the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) and the Police Force for political witch-hunting and to arrest and harass PPP activists.

He contended that SARU has no “locus standi” either within the meaning of the Constitution of the Republic of Guyana or the laws of Guyana; and he said that “any attempt to use SARU to illegally harm the legitimate economic and financial interests of any PPP/C leader and/or former Government functionary on the basis of wild, unsubstantiated and politically-motivated allegations of corruption will be stoutly and resolutely rebuffed by the party.”

The situation, he said, is reminiscent of the once dreaded ‘PNC police state’ which has been responsible for hounding down, jailing and killing political opponents.

Only recently, Omar Shariff, a former Permanent Secretary within the Ministry of the Presidency — who had close ties with the PPP — was asked to proceed on leave after billions of dollars were reportedly found in his bank accounts. Shariff is currently under investigation, and documents and a safe were, earlier this month, removed from his home when SOCU visited.

In a letter to Shariff dated June 30, 2016, Minister Harmon told him to proceed on annual leave so that he could cooperate fully with SOCU during the investigation.

“This is [a] money-laundering and tax-evasion matter, since (there are) large sums of money that he has in his personal accounts,” Harmon said.

Minister Harmon has clarified that the SOCU investigations have nothing to do with Shariff’s role as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of the Presidency.

“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 had worked as Permanent Secretary in the then Office of the President under the former PPP Government.