Jagdeo to go to police on D’Urban Park spending
Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo intends to take the findings of the Auditor General on the Government’s spending as it relates to the controversial D’Urban Park Stadium to the police.
The former Head of State made this clear at a press conference that was held yesterday at his Church Street Office.
There, Jagdeo reminded that his party had filed private criminal charges against Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, and Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson, on the matter but these were subsequently thrown out by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Shalimar Ali-Hack. He recalled, too, that the DPP had bemoaned the fact that the matter was not sent to the police.
Now that the Auditor General’s latest report is out, and a number of discrepancies were found with the project, Jagdeo said that the matter will be taken to the police and the DPP will be asked to relook at the case.
In his report, Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, noted that as at December 31, 2017, amounts totaling $1.150B were expended on the D’Urban Park project.
However, Payment Vouchers to support the expenditure of $107.119M were not produced for audit examination. As such, Sharma said that the completeness, accuracy, and validity of this amount could not be determined.
In addition, the Auditor General pointed out that the amount of $500M was paid to Homestretch Development Inc. (HDI), the private company that was created to implement the D’Urban Park Project. This was paid over to the company so that it could meet its obligation to its creditors.
However, Sharma found that there was no documentation attached to the Payment Vouchers to indicate the works done or that supervisory checks were carried out on the works. He highlighted too that there was no certification to show that the works were satisfactorily completed.
Sharma said that the list of HDI creditors and Government’s proposed payment allocation to each creditor was attached to the Payment Vouchers. In the circumstances, the Auditor General said that the correctness, accuracy and validity of the payments made could not be determined.
Sharma said that his Office wrote the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Public Infrastructure on July 19, last, requesting documentation detailing the works done, supervisory checks of the said works, as well as certification that works were satisfactorily completed.
The Head of the Budget Agency later explained that the Ministry was not involved in the operations of HDI; hence, it did not have any information detailing supervisory checks or their methodology of determining that works were satisfactorily completed.
At the time of his report, Sharma said that his Office was still conducting its investigations into the case.