AS the electoral fraud trial continued on Friday, forensic auditor Terrence Jaskaran further exposed the attempts to derail the 2020 process in favour of the then APNU+AFC government with inflated votes amounting to roughly 20,000.

He exposed this while detailing differences between votes recorded on certified Statements of Poll (SoPs) and figures contained in two Form 24 declarations for Region Four.

Jaskaran, who was engaged by the Ministry of Home Affairs as a forensic audit consultant and attached to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters, was testifying before Principal Magistrate Faith McGusty at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.

He was called by the prosecution and led through his evidence by lead prosecutor, King’s Counsel Darshan Ramdhani.

The court subsequently accepted Jaskaran as an expert in forensic auditing.

Jaskaran told the court that on May 25, 2021, Police Officer Nigel Stephens requested that he conduct a tabulation and analysis of certified copies of SoPs from the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections and compare the figures with those contained in Form 24 declarations.

He said he subsequently accompanied Stephens and a police prosecutor to the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Judicature, where copies of the Region Four SoPs were made and certified. Jaskaran said he was present and observed the certification process.

According to the witness, he commenced the analysis on June 3, 2021, at CID Headquarters.

He explained that he used Excel spreadsheets to enter the votes recorded on each SoP, identifying the respective ballot box and political party.

The figures were then totalled and compared against the corresponding figures appearing on Form 24.

Any discrepancies identified during the exercise were highlighted and included in his report.

Jaskaran said he completed the analysis on July 28, 2021, after which he prepared his report.

Three copies were printed, with two handed over to police officers while he retained the third in a secure office file.

When his examination reached Region Four, Jaskaran explained that, unlike the other regions, he had been provided with two Form 24 declarations for comparison.

One declaration was dated March 5, 2020, while the other was dated March 13, 2020. He said he therefore compared the certified SoPs figures against each declaration separately.

For the March 2 General and Regional Elections, Jaskaran testified that his analysis of the certified SoPs produced a total of 116,215 votes for the APNU+AFC.

That figure, he said, was compared with 136,458 votes recorded for the coalition in the March 5 Form 24 declaration, resulting in a 20,243-vote variance.

He further told the court that the March 13 Form 24 declaration recorded 136,057 votes for APNU+AFC, compared with the 116,215 votes recorded in his SoPs tabulation — a difference of 19,842 votes.

Jaskaran also began giving evidence concerning the PPP/C figures.

He testified that the certified SoPs recorded 80,288 votes for the PPP/C, while the March 5 Form 24 declaration recorded 77,329 votes, representing 2,959 fewer votes in the declaration.

The witness also outlined the performance of the smaller parties that contested the polls, including the variances in their votes across the regions.

The witness’s evidence was confined to the numerical comparison between the certified SoPs and the Form 24 declarations. When his report was tendered into evidence, the court indicated that his testimony would be limited to those numerical comparisons.

His evidence was cut short at that point, with the matter adjourned until Monday, September 21, 2026.

Jaskaran is expected to continue his testimony on the March 13 Form 24 declaration and the corresponding PPP/C figures.

The trial had earlier heard that Clairmont Mingo, then the Region Four Returning Officer, had made the Region Four declarations on March 5 and March 13, 2020.

Jaskaran said his professional background spans accounting, finance and forensic auditing.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Derby and an MBA from Bakke Graduate University in the United States.

He told the court that he is a Fellow of ACCA in the United Kingdom, having joined the professional body in 2011 and attained fellowship five years later.

He also became a member of the Forensic Certified Public Accountant Society in the United States in 2016.

In Guyana, Jaskaran said he is a practising chartered accountant and registered member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana, having obtained his practice licence in 2015. He further testified that he has spent approximately 11 years conducting forensic audits.

The election fraud trial centres on allegations surrounding the tabulation and declaration of results from the 2020 polls, a process that led to months of political uncertainty and legal battles, before a final declaration was made five months after election day.

Those on trial include former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, former Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers, former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, former Health Minister Volda Lawrence and People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) member Carol Smith-Joseph. Also, before the court are former GECOM employees Michelle Miller, Sheffern February, Enrique Livan and Denise Babb-Cummings.

The defendants collectively face 19 charges, including conspiracy to defraud and misconduct in public office. All have pleaded not guilty and were released on cash bail.

The prosecution, led by King’s Counsel Darshan Ramdhani, contends that the accused played critical roles in efforts to inflate votes in favour of the then APNU+AFC, while reducing votes cast for the PPP/C. Following a five-month period of litigation and a Caribbean Community (CARICOM)-supervised national recount, the PPP/C was declared the winner of the elections with 233,336 votes to APNU+AFC’s 217,920.

President, Dr Irfaan Ali was subsequently sworn into office on August 2, 2020. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the elections later concluded that there had been collusion and collaboration among senior GECOM officials to divert votes to APNU+AFC, rather than safeguard the integrity of the electoral process.