THE conspiracy to procure money charge against former General Manager of the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (NGMC), Nizam Hassan and Felecia De Souza-Madramootoo was on Friday dismissed.
This decision was made by Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan, who ruled that the prosecutor, Inspector Neville Jeffers failed to prove his case based upon the inconsistences of several witness testimonies during the trial.
The duo was on trial for conspiracy to procure money under false pretence in relation to the approval of payments for low-grade rehabilitation works done on the New GMC building at Robb Street, Georgetown.

DeSouza-Madramootoo was represented by attorney Glen Hanoman, while attorney Marcel Bobb entered an appearance on behalf of Hassan.
Hassan, 50, of Good Hope, East Coast Demerara and DeSouza-Madramootoo, 34, of Lusignan, another ECD village, were out on $250,000 bail each during trial.
It is alleged that between October 28, 2010 and April 25, 2012, they conspired with each other to commit the offence by continuously approving payments which were made to the contractor of the engineering firm for works that were incompetently and incorrectly done with inferior materials to rehabilitate the NGMC building, knowing that such works should not have been approved.

In 2016, the duo was charged after the Special Organised Crime Unit had completed its report into the investigations on the construction of the building, which had been contracted out in 2011.
A forensic audit report submitted by auditor Saykar Boodhoo back in April had flagged the faulty work on the building.

The forensic audit report was submitted to Cabinet, where it was decided that the findings of the report were serious enough to warrant a deeper investigation, not only into the work done on the building, but also the handling of hundreds of millions of dollars for fertilisers.
The auditor contended that the principals of the company should be charged for using substandard building materials and be barred from executing projects for the Guyana Government.
Searches, according to the report, uncovered no trace of the existence of Constantine Engineering and Construction Services, located at #55 Calcutta Road, #2 Freeport, Carapichaima, Trinidad.

Felicia DeSouza-Madramootoo is the wife of Hanniel Madramootoo, who is the project engineer within the Ministry of Agriculture and also a board member of Constantine Engineering and Construction Services and was in charge of works on the NGMC building.
The company won the bid for a contract worth almost $24M for the construction of a new building for the GMC head office and the Guyana Shop. On February 10, 2012, the contract was amended to include an additional $7,620,984, for which there was no tender.
The auditor was unable to review the bidding documents, since the head of the tender board said he could not find any evidence in his files that showed that the tender board had been involved in the tender process, even though the contract indicated otherwise.
Shortly after the contract was amended, the contractor announced to the GMC that he would be unable to complete the project, and to date, it is unclear how much money was paid to Constantine Engineering. Thus, another contractor was called in to complete the electrical wiring and relevant works to the building.

The report said that, within months of the hand-over, the entire roof of the GMC building was leaking and as such, a contractor had to be brought in to effect repairs.

It was discovered that “old lumber and old zinc sheets with euroband were used to construct the roof of the building,” the report said. It noted that the bill of quantities of the contract for the construction of the office building stipulates Greenheart lumber for the floors, walls and frame, and PVC for the two ceilings of the building. However, it was later observed that mixed hardwood, including “second-quality lumber,” had been used for the walls, and plywood had been used for the ceiling. Plywood is significantly cheaper than PVC panels.
The audit report said it was the Agriculture Ministry’s engineer who had certified the payment vouchers for the plywood, even though there was no amendment for this material to be used in the construction.
The auditor had, in this regard, recommended that the police be called in “to investigate the fraud of using incorrect materials and fraudulent billing for the construction of the building.”
It was also recommended that since it was the engineer who had certified the payments, “he should be charged criminally, and brought before the courts for his participation in conducting fraud against the Government of Guyana.”