Close to two hundred thousand dollars...that’s how much has been discovered missing in an investigation into a theft at the Treasury Department. Financial Secretary Joe Waight today confirmed that there is no confirmed number at this time, because, new discoveries continue to be made and he concluded, quote “it is a growing figure above one hundred thousand (dollars) – where it will reach I can’t say...every half day the news gets a little more disturbing”
7 News has confirmed with the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dean Barrow that a second class clerk, Monica Escarpeta has been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Fin. Sec. Waight confirmed that initially she had been transferred, but she has now been suspended by the Public Services Commission. Waight says he expects that criminal charges will be brought shortly.
But how does someone fleece hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public purse, right in the government treasury? Well, here’s how it worked. A person or persons in the treasury department would add phantoms to the pension rolls – issue fraudulent pension checques in their names and then direct those checques to an account at a commercial bank – where they would be deposited – and small withdrawals were made on a daily basis, apparently by someone working the scam from the outside. Waight confirmed that in some cases the names on the checques were those of legitimate pensioners, which makes it more than just misappropriation or theft, misuse of the names makes it fraud.
But it’s not an over-night scam, not even over a year. Best information suggests it goes back as much as two years at least to 2007. And again, it seems to have been largely orchestrated from the desk of a second class clerk. Joe Waight surmises that different levels of authority were overly concentrated in the hands of one or two officers. He says the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Police Department and the Audit Department are investigating. And now arrests are pending in that case too: making it the third case this week where custodians of public funds are being investigated for missing public funds. I spoke to the Prime Minister today and he conceded that it creates a compelling image of corruption in government.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“This is clearly a case of a public officer violating a public officer’s duty of trust and making away with public monies. To the extent that the system allowed that to happen, of course we have to look at the mechanisms that are in place and find out how this person could get away to the extent that the person got away with what she did. But it has happened, its regrettable, its yet another instance of something happening that puts us on the back foot in terms of the perception that’s growing that corruption is almost unstoppable in this country.
I am greatly troubled by what has happened but all I can say at this point in response to it is that the person has been suspended, the matter has been turned over to the police, again I am sure that charges will be brought and the authorities, the officials, will be mandated and obliged to look at the system to see if this happened not just as a result of the dishonesty and ingenuity of the person who committed the theft but whether it was also because of or at least helped by some loopholes in the system but that’s a longer term exercise but I am sure it will be done.”
Financial Secretary Joe Waight confirmed that the process of issuing pension cheques has already been tightened so that there are four persons responsible for issuing any one cheque.
