The continued absence of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) Prosecutor yesterday prompted a city magistrate to dismiss several charges against six former Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) members, who were accused of failing to record entries for funds amounting to over $200 million in total in the agency’s general ledger.
Those charged were: Jagnarine Singh, former GRDB General Manager; Prema Roopnarine, former Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture; Ricky Ramraj, agricultural consultant; Badrie Persaud, business consultant; Dharamkumar Seeraj, the General Secretary of the Rice Producers Associa-tion and a PPP/C MP; and Nigel Dharamlall, also a PPP/C MP.
The first of these three charges, which were read to Roopnarine, Persaud, Seeraj and Ramraj, related to the sum of $9,724,082 and the period between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013; the second related to the sum of $1,045,000 and the period between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2015; and the third related to the sum of $130,000,000 and the period between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014.
