Reduced PPP/C votes by over 3,000
A forensic accountant’s analysis of certified Statements of Poll (SoPs) and Form 24 declarations was presented on Friday in the ongoing 2020 elections fraud trial before Magistrate Faith McGusty, recording major discrepancies in Region Four figures.
Terrence Jaskaran, a Chartered Accountant and highly regarded forensic audit consultant attached to the Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), testified that he was asked to compare certified SoPs from the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections with Form 24 declarations.
Jaskaran said certified Region Four SoPs were obtained from the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court. He said he entered the figures into spreadsheets, totalled the votes recorded for each party and compared those totals against the Form 24 declarations.
For Region Four’s General Election, Jaskaran’s analysis records 116,215 votes for APNU+AFC from the certified SoPs he examined.
This was compared with 136,458 votes declared on a March 5 Form 24, a difference of 20,243 votes, and 136,057 votes declared on a March 13 Form 24, a difference of 19,842 votes.
The analysis records 80,288 votes for the PPP/C from the certified SoPs he examined, compared with 77,329 votes on the March 5 declaration and 77,231 on the March 13 declaration, differences of 2,959 and 3,057 votes, respectively.
In an invited comment, Senior Prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani K.C. said that Jaskaran’s testimony demonstrates that “were the declarations by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to stand, APNU-AFC would have unlawfully received approximately three seats and the PPP/C would have been denied over four seats.”
Jaskaran’s testimony also records smaller variances involving several other parties. It further states that some certified SoPs were blank or were not presented and were therefore excluded from the calculation.
Despite objections from attorneys representing the nine GECOM officials accused, Magistrate Faith McGusty accepted Jaskaran as an expert in his field.
Jaskaran is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and Forensic Certified Public Accountant. He has worked in audit and assurance since 2011 and has been a licensed practising auditor since 2015.
He has participated in Government-commissioned forensic audits involving the Sugar Industry Welfare Fund and the Guyana Passport Office, and his audit practice has undergone professional peer review in the United States and United Kingdom.