Sydney James, other officials yet to face charges over damning audit findings of corruption at SOCU

Almost one year ago, the Guyana Police Force’s Audit Department conducted an assessment of the financial affairs at the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU).

That audit revealed damning levels of corruption from top to bottom of the agency. But to date, not a single charge has been laid against any of the individuals fingered in the report.

The document which was seen by this newspaper notes that the former Head of the Unit, Sydney James, and several other officials such as Superintendents Robert Tyndall, Trevor Reid, Byran Vieira and Corporal Kevin Haywood from the Guyana Defence Force, abused the agency’s Operational Fund which benefitted from $1.5M on a monthly basis.

With the exception of a payment book, the audit found that there is no record to rely on for a transparent and accountable financial process at SOCU. In fact, auditors said there is no remittance book, daily cash composition book, no account and expenditure books.
As it relates to some of the instances of fraud and corruption, auditors observed that in June 2016, Reid, Tyndall and Vieira collected $600,000.00 each.

But in a scramble to prove that they could account for it, they produced several receipts from January to June to show that they would have spent $100,000 a month on intelligence gathering. But these receipts were found to be back dated.
It was further observed by the auditors that Haywood, who served as the secretary and not as an investigator, did no operational duties during the time of the assessment, but he still received a whopping $1,378,000.

Additionally, the auditors noted that SOCU officials could not provide bills for 17 items which they said totalled $593,565.
What was strikingly odd to the auditors is the fact that a local store called PC Shack repaired a SOCU printer for $21,000 and installed the same printer for $138,171 in one day. But three weeks later, it was repaired again at a cost of $87,180.

The auditors were also disturbed to find that SOCU had spent $84,000 to print Christmas cards but there is no evidence of the number of cards printed and their type along with who they were sent to.

Other findings that were deeply troubling to the auditors included the expenditure of $1.2M on sourced information from U.S intelligence for which no evidence could be produced; and payment of $500,000 to J. Eastman and Associates Financial Services for auditing and accounting services,.

This is in spite of the fact that SOCU had an advisor and senior financial investigators at that time. The auditors were also keen to note that there is no record to show what works the agency provided.
As for the entity’s former Head, there are allegations against him that he forged the signature of his successor, Superintendent, Althea Padmore, so that he could obtain almost $1.8M.

Auditors also learnt that James claimed to have paid a total of $1,719,000 on five occasions to repair motor vehicle PRR 2609. It was discovered that this was not a police vehicle. In addition, the store he claimed to have made the payments to, A and F Auto repairs, cannot be located.

Another disturbing discovery for the auditors were records which showed that SOCU officials paid $10,300,000 to M. Ali for car rental. All the receipts were vague and had no vehicle registration numbers or the period they were rented for.
Also, the receipts had no letter head or official stamps. The auditors were alarmed at the fact that the amount paid to Ali is 43.6% of SOCU’s expenditure for the audit period (2016 to 2019).

Kaieteur News understands that all of the evidence for all the instances of corruption identified by the Audit Department has been handed over to the police for further investigation by the Fraud Squad.