THE practice of “highly irregular” and “very suspect “ transactions by employees of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB), who cashed cheques at the rice board on behalf of suppliers was one of several financial impropriates red-flagged by auditing firm, Nigel Hinds Financial Services .
A copy of the forensic audit report conducted by the firm for the period November 1, 2011 –May 31, 2015 was this week handed over to Police Commissioner, Seelall Persaud, by Minister within the Finance Ministry, Jaipaul Sharma.

According to the report, during the scouring of the financial records of the GRDB, more than G$9.8M, which was “supposedly due to suppliers” was paid to employees of the rice board via cheques.

The employees would then cash the cheques, and according to the audit report, the monies would be “supposedly” paid to the suppliers.

“This practice is highly irregular and very suspect,” the report stated, noting that there is absolutely no business benefit to the GRDB in the practice.

According to the report, the practice creates a number of risks, and these include the opening of avenues for the misappropriation of GRDB resources.

One employee, at the time received a sum of $4.1M in that regard, while others included an accountant and cashier received $1.1M and $4.7M respectively.

The auditing firm noted that the evidence gathered leads it to believe that “there is a strong possibility that invoices were created or duplicated by staff”. The firm recommended a detailed transactional investigation into the practice.

It was noted too that the absence of invoices or receipts for payments calls into question whether employees were required to make the payments in question to third parties on behalf of the GRDB.