No funds to prosecute defaulters, says Chairman of Integrity Commission

TIMES INT'L

It has been just over a month since the Integrity Commission published a list of public officials who failed to declare their assets in 2019.
Under the laws of Guyana, they are required to declare their assets to the Commission by June 30 each year and as such, if any public officer fails to comply with the Commission, they can be fined G$25,000 and imprisonment for a period of not less than six months.
However, Integrity Commission Chairman Kumar Doraisami, in an exclusive with Guyana Times International on Tuesday, stated that the Commission does “not have funds” to prosecute defaulters.
“Right now, we do not have funds to do that, because elections is going to be next month and from then on, we expect to allocation of money to run the office and right now, we barely getting by, because the Government is not really functioning right now and we are trying to cover basic expenses,” Doraisami noted.
According to the Chairman, the first course of action would be to publish the names of the defaulters, “then we’ll go ahead and think about prosecution.”
He reiterated that prosecution should be the last resort as the Commission’s duty is “to get them to comply” while adding that the Commission lacked an investigator.
“[We] cannot even follow through because we do not have Prosecutors; we do not have sufficient investigators. We will just have to wait.”
Former Attorney General Anil Nandlall has already called on the Commission to ensure that this level of “lawlessness” does not go unpunished.
Among the list of defaulters are Attorney General Basil Williams; Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Karen Cummings; Public Service Minister Tabitha Sarabo-Halley; Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan; Social Cohesion Minister, Dr George Norton; Junior Minister of Agriculture, Valerie Adams-Yearwood, and Minister within the Ministry of the Presidency, Simona Broomes.
Other defaulters include former Government Parliamentarians: Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, Mervyn Williams, Jennifer Wade, Rajcoomarie Bancroft, John Adams, Richard Allen, Michael Carrington, Jermaine Figueira, Barbara Patricia Pilgrim, Donna Moothoo, Reynard Ward, and Audwin Rutherford.

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