Contractor allegedly forges signature on $10M application letter
Jun 08, 2018 , https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...ualification-letter/
An Alliance For Change executive member and contractor of Quad Constructions in Berbice, has come under scrutiny for allegedly forging a businessman’s signature on a $10M pre-qualification letter that was submitted to several ministries.
APNU/AFC Councillor Gobin Harbhajan
The issue was brought up at the Regional Democratic Council’s monthly statutory meeting yesterday under the works committee report. Acting Chairman Dennis Deroop was sitting at the Head of the Committee.
PPP Zamal Hussain and APNU/AFC Gobin Harbhajan both argued on the issue that it ought to be handled at the highest level.
According to reports reaching this publication, the contractor drafted a pre-qualification letter and affixed a signature as if the businessman signed the piece of document himself.
The businessman in question has since denied signing the document.
A regional source stated, “This letter, he did not supply it to the Region for pre-qualification; he supplied it to the Ministry of Communities so that is where the businessman got back a copy of the letter. So apparently, he is using it for all the ministries- Public Infrastructure, Communities and Public Security.”
This, the source stated, is “fraud at the highest level”.
The letter allowed the individual to pre-qualify as a contractor, “although he is pre-qualified at the region, the letter did not come here”.
PPP Councillor Zamal Hussain while raising the issue at the RDC, said that the letter was drafted by the contractor “to give credit security in the sum of $10M”.
He disclosed that the supplier is “very annoyed with what is happening here and he is willing to come forward to ensure that the letter is not used by the Ministry of Communities, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, the Ministry of Communities and the Ministry of Agriculture”.
Hussain claimed that the contractor is being given contracts based on fraudulent activities.
According to him, documents were perused pertaining to pre-qualification and the letter did not show up in the file for the contractor/AFC executive, “we have cleared this in terms of the regional tender board.”
In support of Hussain’s call to deal with the matter urgently, APNU/AFC councillor Gobin Harbhajan stated that he met with the owner of the business who is the alleged victim of the fraudulent activity and he showed him the letter that was signed by the contractor using his name.
“I don’t care which political party this person supports but if found guilty of this offence, I want to send a strong message that the full penalty of the law should be given to this individual because we have been talking about corruption and now we actually have proof,” Harbhajan lamented.
He questioned how many places the letter would have already been sent to and how many times it was done before.
Efforts to contact the contractor/AFC member on the allegations against him were futile.
Prequalification is used to identify contractors who would be allowed to tender for certain contracts. Once a company is pre-qualified for a particular contract, it is then eligible to tender for that contract.
A firm applying for prequalification has no expectation to be awarded any contract on the basis of the application for prequalification.
Its only expectation is that once it has been approved for prequalification, then it is free to bid for the contract. Only prequalified firms are eligible to bid on a contract.